


My Lovely Assistant

by FunkyMeihem



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: F/M, Jiangshi Mei, Junkenstein, JunkensteinAU, Meihem - Freeform, Vampire Mei, junkmei, meirat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-12
Updated: 2018-02-12
Packaged: 2019-01-16 13:47:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 29,369
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12343902
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FunkyMeihem/pseuds/FunkyMeihem
Summary: Dr. Junkenstein prepares for the assault on Adlersbrunn Castle and is saddled with a new assistant that can't understand a word he says and keeps eyeing him in the strangest way. Junkenstein AU with guest appearance of Jiangshi Mei.





	1. Chapter 1

“Be careful with that, you oaf! FRAGILE! Can’t you read?!…Oh wait, guess y’can’t. Still, be careful with it!” Dr. Junkenstein scrambled after the hulking form of his Monster, who was carrying an enormous crate in both bulky arms. The crate had arrived on a ragged looking delivery wagon late that night, and Junkenstein had become so excited that he had dragged the thing up two sets of stairs all by himself, before realizing his more muscular creation could carry it up the other nineteen.  
  
Still babbling to himself, he swerved ahead of the hulking Monster and thrust a booted foot forward to kick open the door. The crate was finally delivered into its proper place in his upper spire labs, and was already drawing attention. Monster had stepped back and was eying it rather distrustfully, the zomnic prototypes scattered around the room all turned their heads, and even Scarecrow- one of his earliest and most useless tests at false life- had appeared to peek in another door, its glowing lenses whirring softly.  
  
Junkenstein turned to face the massive crate proudly, hands on his hips. “Can’t believe it’s finally here! This here’s a game-changer, boys! Turns out it’s not just the Witch who’s taken a stroll on the other side and come back, ooooh no. There’s others out there who have defeated death itself. This one…This one is going to be invaluable to my studies. Not like you lot, or you…or especially YOU!” He pointed in a very accusatory way at Scarecrow, who covered its face with its spindly straw hands and started uttering weepy noises. Junkenstein summarily ignored it, waving a hand at Monster, who had reappeared next to his side with a crowbar. “Well, what are you waiting for?! Get it open! Get it open right now!”  
  
The crowbar was jammed into the crate’s wood, pulling nails and sending splinters flying as the top was wrenched away. It clattered onto the ground nearby, and Junkenstein nearly dove into it, reaching his top half into the container as he began pulling away clumps of straw and cloth and soft cushions. With a shrieking “ _Ah-haaa_!” he finally emerged a moment later, helping to prop up the form of…a woman? Though it was not a sort of woman that had ever been seen in a place like Adlersbrunn before. She was a tiny thing, dressed in a strange purple foreign costume, her skin deathly pale save for the circles of rouge on her cheeks to give the illusion of lifelike rosiness. A domed hat with a feather lay perched atop her elaborate hair, and a scroll with strange markings lay across her face, almost obscuring her glasses. A pair of tiny fangs jutted over her pale lower lip. And she seemed to be quite…dead.  
  
Junkenstein cackled gleefully, propping her rigor-mortis stricken form up against the side of the crate as he rummaged through the rest of it. Finding another smaller package, he ripped it open and procured a feather and a bottle of ink, along with a set of instructions. Sticking his tongue out of the side of his mouth and adjusting his goggles, he dipped the quill into the ink and then leaned over to the woman’s symbolic paper slip across her forehead. Occasionally glancing towards the set of instructions, he changed several of the symbols, drawing dots or adding lines, and worked carefully for a minute or two before drawing back and waiting.  
  
Her eyes fluttered open behind her glasses, eerily pale and almost white before they began to darken and focus. She uttered a rasping noise as if trying to breathe, before reaching drowsily for the gleeful scientist that loomed over her. Her hands, ending sharp black claws, snagged the hem of his lab coat sleeves.  
  
“我在哪里?” she asked softly.  
  
“Right! Right! You’re awake, finally. I’m the famous, handsome, amazing Dr. Junkenstein -you’ve probably heard of me- and this is Adlersbrunn Castle, which I’m about to be in charge of very, very soon. Here, here, up y’go.” He helped her sit up a little more as she held her head, clinging onto him a little more as she looked around at her strange surroundings, wide-eyed.  
  
The zomnic parts scattered around the room, twitching and grinding and in various stages of half life, were more than a bit eerie. And the lighting, shocking blue from the crackles of electricity on the conductors high above them, threw strange shadows across everything, including the massive collections of sharp tools, books, and almost torture-device looking contraptions that lay around everywhere. Monster said nothing, breathing heavily next to her crate. From its corner of the room, Scarecrow offered a stitched smile and a little wave. Junkenstein swerved abruptly back into her view, smiling with every single one of his sharp white teeth as she struggled to stand. “That’s it, love, take it slow. You and I have such a lot to talk about. Heh, might have outdone even the Witch with this one!…Don’t tell her I said that.”  
  
“这是什么地方?”She adjusted her glasses with one claw, peering at him with that dark gaze. “你是谁?”  
  
“Er, right. So, tell me about this whole…you know, dead thing, process. How did you do it? How did you come back?”  
  
“我怕极了…”  
  
“Wait a minute, d’you speak English!? How am I supposed to talk to you if you can’t talk!”  
  
“这让人伤脑筋.”  
  
Junkenstein bellowed and held the sides of his head, pulling at his wild tufts of hair. “Hrrrrngh! Really? REALLY? They send me a gibberish-speaking dead girl who can’t tell me how she got dead and then not dead? See, this is why you’ve always got to read the fine print! This whole thing is your fault!” He jabbed a finger at Monster, who was offering a hand to help the confused girl out of her shipping crate. “Fine, you know what, we’ll just run some tests on you later along with the others. You just…I don’t know, run along and play with the boys or something.”  
  
He stormed off towards his desk, throwing the ink pot across the room where it splattered against the wall and rolled away. Bending over the mound of papers across his desk, he angrily began double-checking over his schematics for the hundredth time, only distracted when he heard the soft shuffle of cloth and a curious noise behind him. Hop. Hop. Hop. The girl was moving like a rabbit, her knees locked together, hopping towards him with both arms straight out. She held out the bottle of ink he had thrown a little earlier, offering it out to him when she finally hopped into range, smiling with her teeny fanged smile.  
  
“你东西掉了?” she said, holding it forth.  
  
Junkenstein eyed her for a moment, then took the ink pot and threw it across the room again.

  
  
***

  
  
Eventually he had left for his study, needing more cross-references about omnic anatomy and the electrical current thereof. Grabbing another armful of book, he slumped down into his armchair and started flipping through them, listening to the crackle of the fireplace. Until…there was that sound again. Hop. Hop. Hop.  
  
“Go away! I already said you’re useless. Look, however you say it in your language. Goooo. A-waaay.” Junkenstein threw one arm out, trying to shoo away the girl as she hopped through the hallway and into his door. He was just about to get up and physically remove her yet again, when he heard the clink of china. She was holding a cracked tray with a steaming kettle and a cup and saucer, and several biscuits. Somehow she managed to balance it all quite flawlessly, even with her strange method of locomotion. The silverware barely rattled. “Uh. Wait, where’d you even get that?”  
  
“喝一杯茶?” She smiled, little pearly fangs glinting as she bent to offer the tray.  
  
He scrunched his nose in irritation, but the steam from the tea did smell good, and the sudden gurgle in his stomach definitely meant he’d forgotten to eat today, again. Begrudgingly accepting the tea tray, he dropped it with a clatter onto his table and began scarfing it down, barely even giving the boiling liquid time to cool. The girl waited, still half-smiling and eyes shining as he ate, spraying cookie crumbs everywhere onto his books as he did so. Between mouthfuls, he jabbed his pen at her. “All right, fine, points to you. You can make a pot of tea, big deal. My zomnics can make a pot of tea too…I mean, if I control them remotely. And they’re not very good at it with those clampers of theirs but…” He slurped down another cup of tea. “Look, just go play with Scarecrow or some such and don’t get in my way. I’ve got a lot of work to do and it turned out you’re no help at all!”  
  
Wordlessly, clearly not understanding a word he’d spoken, she gathered up the tray and brushed away the crumbs on his chest as he batted her claws away, before hopping out and heading back down the hall. Junkenstein was left to his studies as the moon rose higher into the night sky.  
  
He was awoken the next morning by a large hand slamming down on the table next to him, and uttered a caterwauling shriek as he twisted and flailed in his chair, tilting backward with a crash. Staring up into the masked face of The Reaper, he clutched his pounding heart. “Why do you gotta do a bloke like that!?” he demanded. “Why not a little tap on the shoulder or a kiss on the cheek, blimey!”  
  
The Reaper’s glowing eyes stared down at him, pumpkin head grinning as ever, as an unearthly voice growled its depths. “She wants to see you.”  
  
“The Witch? The Witch of the Wilds is here? Right now?!” Junkenstein leapt upright, trying to adjust his coat around his dismally lanky body and smooth his hair down.  
  
The Reaper snorted, clearly not impressed with his attempts -or impressed with the man himself- and gestured to the open door. “Down in the kitchens.”  
  
“Wh- The kitchens, why there? Okay uh, lemme go and talk to her.”  
  
“That’s generally the idea for this visit,” Reaper replied dryly, examining his talons.  
  
Junkenstein patted himself into some semblance of order, grabbing an armful of books and papers and hurrying down the long halls and stairs; down, down, down through nearly the whole tower until he came to the little pantry and kitchen area near the very bottom. To his surprise, he heard laughter from behind the door, and bashed it open with his bony shoulder as he staggered in, nearly spilling everything he was carrying. “Oi! Um, d-did you want to see me, ma’am? Er, miss? Lady, Witch, Ma’am.”  
  
The kitchen was, for once, full of people. Monster was leaning up against a nearby wall, arms folded, Reaper had mysteriously appeared in a chair from nowhere, and even Scarecrow was lurking by the door of the wine cellars. The Witch, the most powerful of all creatures he knew, was sitting casually at his table, her hat tilted back and a smile on her beautiful face. For the first time in a very long while, she actually seemed happy to be here. With another airy laugh, she gestured for the scientist to sit down. “My dear doctor, you should have told me you’d gotten a jiangshi. Perhaps she was meant to be a surprise? You know, I’m usually a little… _reserved_ …on your choice of servants, but this one is different. She’s absolutely delightful.”  
  
“Gotten a whatnow?” Junkenstein echoed, scratching his head on the edge of a rolled-up scroll. “Delightful who?”  
  
Hop. Hop. Hop. The girl came hopping over with another tray, set out with cream and sugar and another kettle of tea. Smiling her fanged smile, she began speaking in that rapid up-and-down singsong language to the Witch. To his surprise, the Witch actually responded in kind, and the two prattled on for a bit and occasionally gestured to him in a way that was rapidly raising his proverbial hackles.  
  
The Witch gave the girl a nod. “Mei has told me all about how you were the one who woke her up from the long sleep and have given her a new home here. Where ever did you actually manage to find a genuine jiangshi, much less get her all the way here?”  
  
Junkenstein’s mouth went dry, coughing softly. When he’d filled out the order form for the ‘ _Living Dead of the Orient_ ’, on page 32 of Dr. Amazo’s Exotic Curios, his first thoughts had been to use the knowledge this ‘living dead’ specimen would no doubt grant him to master the art of life and death, until he could overthrow the Witch herself and lead his undead armies on to the rest of the world, veiling them all in endless night of slaughter and mocking them as they had once mocked him.  
  
Instead he cleared his throat and blindly reached out one lanky arm until it found the girl, pulling her tiny form in against his side in what he hoped was a chummy way. “Yeah! Uh, you know, I got my ways. One day I thought to myself, I thought, we could definitely use the services of a jongchi to-”  
  
“ _Jiāngshī,_ ” the girl corrected gently in her strange accent.  
  
“ _Gesundheit_ ,” he replied, rubbing his hand up and down her arm in a rather nervous way. “I thought, we could use a sort of jonkshi in the ranks. So I had her brought here and she’s been very…helpful…?”  
  
“Well you’ve chosen an absolutely lovely assistant,” The Witch said, taking another sip of her tea. “I assume she will also be helping us with the plans against Adlersbrunn? Everything is on schedule, as you’ve said?”  
  
“Oh! Oh yeah, she’ll be doing all sorts of assistant things. It’s all in keeping with your plans, ma’am. The Summoner has agreed to your terms. The zomnics are all ready to go, the RIP-wheels and bombs are all charged, we’ve got this big lug here- “ he gestured to the Monster, who merely grunted in reply, “-and whatserface, Mei, she’s ready to…erm…hop?” The girl pulled out of his grip, hopping back towards the kitchens once more as Junkenstein dumped the collection of books and scrolls onto the table. “A few hiccups here and there, maybe, but everything will be ready for that night, mark my words.”  
  
The Witch waved away all his cunning plans and schematics. “That will not be necessary. I trust you will have everything exactly to specification in time. In accordance with our deal, of course…Dr. Junkenstein.”  
  
He felt his blood grow a little colder but forced a smile. “O-of course.”  
  
“Then please don’t let us keep you, Doctor. You should return to your work.” The Witch smiled back at him, and in a ripple of black magic, both she and the Reaper were gone, leaving nothing but a few fading wisps of smoky shadow in their wake.  
  
Junkenstein exhaled noisily and slumped into his chair, rubbing a gloved hand over his stubbled chin. “Well, this is all a fine howdoyado.” His eyes slanted to where Mei had vanished into the other kitchen. “Well, looks like you got on her good side, at least. So I guess you won’t be on the dissection table as soon as we thought. So you know, congratulations and whatnot to you.”  
  
She came hopping back out and placed a bowl of fried eggs and ham in front of him before starting to clear away the tea trays, still smiling at him. “我喜欢你.”  
  
He blinked down at the meal, biting back a string of drool from his lip. “All right. I got some sort of Chinese zombie assistant who can’t understand anything I want to say, but she can cook, and the Witch likes her and DON’T THINK I DON’T SEE YOU THERE, RACK OFF-” He turned abruptly to bellow at Scarecrow as it tried reaching for the tea, causing the miserable creation to run off out the door. He turned back to the startled Mei. “All right, and she’s sort of cute in a…way? And the Witch likes her. And I guess she’s not the only one who’s not much good for conversation, eh, Pigface?”  
  
The Monster grunted.  
  
“And the Witch likes her,” he mused, shoveling a spoonful of eggs into his jaws, not even noticing where Mei leaned near his chair and stared adoringly at his throat as he ate. “You know…we might actually be able to make this work.”


	2. Chapter 2

Nearly a week had passed as Junkenstein worked frantically, the ranks of his zomnics swelling as the days went by. The new prototypes for the zomnic grenadiers had worked beautifully, although none could hold a candle to his own mastery of explosives. He had spent countless hours locked in his spire lab, hands flying amongst the inner workings and guts of his creations, as the sun rose and fell several times outside. Occasionally his eyelids would ache or one of his limbs would doze off as his body tried to remind him of its desperate need for rest; but he would always shrug it off. He could sleep when he’d taken over the castle. Or when he was dead.  
  
After all, being dead hadn’t slowed Mei down at all. His newly appointed assistant followed him nearly everywhere, dark eyes watching his every move behind the spell paper on her forehead. The soft thumping hop, hop, hop, trailed behind him no matter where he tried to go, and only halted when it was made clear to her that she couldn’t leave the tower…Well, she’d also learned to stay out of the bathroom too, when she’d accidentally hopped in on him just as he’d dropped trou, but that was a mistake she’d only made once. He’d almost grown used to her presence by now, and the way she always conveniently appeared to hand him a tool or another cup of coffee or tea or when random plates of food would appear on his table.  
  
For now he stood on the rickety plank walkway outside the spire, watching the clouds gather. They were the best sort of clouds, in his own opinion; the gooey pitch-black sort of cloud that lit up from within with dangerous blue light, crackling and white on the inside, sending rolling waves of thunder ahead of them. The winds were starting to pick up and the first droplets of rain were beginning to patter against the umbrella that was being held over him by the doting jiangshi. He took another sip from the cracked cup in his hand, pinky out, drumming his fingers thoughtfully as the caffeine helped chase away some of the purple in the bags below his eyes. “Damn good cuppa, love. Dunno how you do it.”  
  
“不麻烦.”  
  
Handing the empty cup back to her, he placed his hands on his hips and faced down the darkening sky as the wind whipped at his labcoat. “That’s right, needed that extra boost for tonight. Soon as the rest of this storm rolls in, we’ll begin. You don’t have to be here if you don’t want, I know you’re a real sensitive tender-hearted sort.” His mechanical hand hovered over her shoulder for a moment before awkwardly patting her like a dog.  
  
She jabbered something at him in her strange language and grasped onto his arm, resting her head against his sleeve.  
  
“You’re feeling a bit clingy today, eh? Oh, you’re uh…All right, you’re sniffing me again, sometimes I forget that that’s just one of those things you do.” He leaned away and pinched his lips tightly together as she raised onto the tips of her slippered toes, trying to nuzzle his neck again despite her short height. His spine bent backward until he had leaned back far enough where she couldn’t quite reach him, not seeing where her stubby fangs started to lengthen out of her pale pink gums as he muttered awkwardly, “So…Uhh…Listen, darl…”  
  
She brightened and opened her lips, leaning towards him again, and only stopped when his gloved hand enveloped most of her face and pushed her back down again.  
  
“Whoa now! Look, I like a gal who recognizes my greatness almost as much as I do, but...” He blinked at her from behind the blue glass of his goggles, shining bright in the shadow of her umbrella. “Uh, you’re sweet and all, been a great assistant, really nice for a dead lady, and I mean that wholeheartedly- but you’re moving awfully fast and I’ve just got a lot on my plate right now. I mean, a zomnic invasion to lead, a monarchy to topple, conquering life and death itself…You know, you’re part of a bigger picture now and we’ve got to be professional about this sort of thing. How about when all my plans come to fruition and I dominate the world with my army, I’ll take you out to dinner and do things the proper way?”  
  
She nodded at the word dinner and started leaning up towards him again.  
  
He sighed and once again pushed her down with both hands. “We’ve really got to do something about this language barrier thing at some point. Look, I’m not saying I don’t like you, but-” He was interrupted as thunder boomed loudly from up above him, shrieking as he ducked down behind the much smaller jiangshi.  
  
She squinted at him, then pointed up to the rapidly-growing rainclouds with her umbrella, making a little questioning noise.  
  
Straightening his labcoat with a little cough and pretending that he had definitely not been hiding behind a girl almost half his size, he turned and pointed up at the ominous sky. “That’s right, darl, lots of power in those storms. And if I can harness it, that’ll boost my batteries to full power and then some! Won’t even need the Witch for this part if I can just direct all that zapping to the right place…Speaking of zapping, I’d better get up there before the lightning starts really poppin’! So you be a very good girl and go do…I don’t know, jiangshi things.” He rubbed his hands together eagerly, heading back inside as Mei snapped her umbrella shut and hurried after him. “All we need to do is lead a few bolts into the right place, throw the switch, and everything will fall right into place!”  
  
The rain was starting to fall in sheets now, and a deep peal of thunder rumbled through, rattling the windows in their crooked panes. Junkenstein strode past Monster and Scarecrow, ignoring them both as he slammed a fist down on the lift button. There was a creak of old metal and chain, and the square shaped panel in the ceiling high above shifted and slowly began to lower downward with a mechanical grinding noise. Rainwater flooded in where it had once been sealed, as Junkenstein hopped aboard and slammed the button again, starting to ride it upward. Mei looked positively alarmed, hopping towards him as her last hop turned into more of a leap, landing atop the platform with a thud. Before he could start scolding her, she had wrapped her arms around his waist and was babbling uselessly in her native tongue, pointing up towards the storm already raging above.  
  
“Mei! Darl, I really don’t have time for you to be misbehaving right now! No! Down! Down, girl, no! Bad!” Junkenstein frowned at her, his hair starting to wilt as water pelted down on them both. He pushed down at her arms, trying to extract himself from her grip, but wheezed aloud when her grip tightened enough to squeeze the air from him. She was certainly a lot stronger than she looked. With a groan, he looked up as they neared the opening to the roof. “For being my lovely assistant, the only thing you’re assisting in right now, is pissing me off! You and I are going to have a talk later…” He trailed off when she looked up at him, resting her chin on the front of his coat with her dark eyes shimmering behind her glasses and the wet spell paper plastered to her forehead. “Errrghh… Fine, you can come up with me…but only because I’m letting you! Look, just stand over here and watch. Be good. Time for me to go to work!”  
  
He managed to slither out of her grasp as the elevator came to a stop at the top of the roof, onto the rickety wood and stone of the parapets and the electric coils he had rigged up here months ago. Throwing a long length of cord over his bony shoulder, he staggered over to the electrical station, slamming buttons and pulling levers as he plugged and unplugged various wires. The waters soaked him to the bone and dripped down his goggles, drumming against his teeth and tongue as he grinned uncontrollably wide, laughing to himself all the way as lightning lit up the skies around him and thunder reverberated in his bones. Mei was calling something to him from the lift, but he didn’t care enough to listen.  
  
The coils lifted up into the air as he maneuvered another lever, biting onto his tongue as jagged lightning arched through the inky clouds…Close, but not close enough. The wind whipped the rain into needles, pelting his face and nearly blinding him, but he laughed all the more madly as the coils lifted higher into the sky. Noisily turning a crank, he aimed it up towards the maelstrom above them, and…  
  
BOOM!  
  
There was a deafening crack as a zig-zag of pure white arced down from the sky and hit its target, as the transformer exploded with blue light, sparks flying and dancing across the stones. Another peal of thunder sounded almost immediately afterward, fading into the sound of Junkenstein’s ear-splitting laughter. “More! More! MOOOOORE!”  
  
He shrugged off Mei’s desperate claws, turning the crank again as bolt after bolt was fed into the great machine. The transformer hummed, still spewing blue sparks as the cords fed it into his lab below. Giggling to himself, the mad doctor grasped another lever and pulled, ready for another bolt…  
  
Only this time the lever came apart in his hands, followed by a booming noise as part of the control panel exploded underneath his fingers. Blue light was quickly overwhelmed by fiery yellow, and it took a moment for his addled brain to realize that he was spinning in the air, peppered with metal shards, fire, and debris as he went skidding across the wet parapet stones and vanished over the edge, followed by the sound of the jiangshi’s screaming.  
  
***  
  
He fell.  
  
The rain fell alongside him, both dragged towards the ground far, far below, by the same gravity. It was going to be such a long fall. He was able to wonder for a moment what his body would look like, going through his options. None were very pretty. And if he’d failed, would the Witch even bother to bring him back? She’d warned him about his carelessness before. Shame. He’d really, really been looking forward to this whole ‘revenge and world domination’ thing. But now he’d never get the chance.  
  
What a shame. Well! At least he’d gone out with a boom! A rather nice one too, too bad he would only have a few seconds to appreciate it all before he-  
  
  
***  
  
Something smashed into him from above, hard enough to hurt. Like a small, adorable missile, the jiangshi had caught up with him and clipped him right out of the air. Mei’s arm wrapped around him, pulling his flailing body against her side as she twisted in the air like an acrobat. Throwing out her other claw, she snagged onto the thick neck of a stone gargoyle water spout that jutted out from the tower side, her talons nearly splitting the rock as she used it to throw herself into a swing. Heading right for the wall, she flipped so she hit it feet-first…and  she didn’t hop off it so much as leap from it, slamming both legs into it and rebounding off it as a noise like a gunshot went off, pebbles scattering from the impact as she hurtled away from it.  
  
Junkenstein was dragged along with her as she went sailing, twisting again so she leapt off the wall of another tower nearby, then another, ping-ponging back and forth off walls, gutters, rooftops, and lifting him in both arms as she finally bounced off a cart full of straw and stuck the landing. With a splash from the muddy puddles around them, she landed solidly in the abandoned courtyard, holding the stunned Junkenstein against her chest like a swooning damsel, his gangly limbs sticking out on either side of her.  
  
His thoughts tried to catch up with him, rattling around in his skull like dice in a tin cup. He was vaguely aware that had just been saved, and stared up at her with an expression of surprise plastered on his features, cheeks blushing pink under the blue of his goggles, mouth hanging open. “Wh…Wh-huh..hhh..?”  
  
She smiled down at him and said…something or other…in her language, rain dripping off her chin as she very delicately helped him to his feet, holding on when his legs wobbled.  
  
“Er uh…well…Not really sure what to say here. That was…well ya know. How? Have you always been able to leap like that? That was almost like flying,don’t you think? Hell’s bells, thought I might have been a goner there for half a sec.” He let himself be guided across the sludgey courtyard, Mei hopping alongside him. “Owe you one, sweetpea, I really do. Remember when I was going to dissect you on the table to see what makes you tick? Well, that idea is ancient history. I’m keeping you as my lovely assistant. You’re a lot better than Scarecrow, anyway. Lot more pretty, too, if I’m being honest…Meant what I said before, by the by. I’m going to treat you to the best, most romantic dinner you’ve ever had. It’s going to knock your Chinese socks off. If you wear socks, ya know?…”  
  
They retreated back into his tower, though Mei refused to let him back towards his lab and instead herded him into his study as she sat him in front of the fireplace with a blanket around his sopping shoulders. He sat wrapped in it for a while, teeth chattering, until she returned- placing a tray with steaming hot tea and an enormous sandwich on the table in front of him.  
  
“Thanks, love, you’re a peach,” he murmured, starting to reach for the food.  
  
He halted abruptly when she appeared back in front of him, urging him back into his chair as she began pulling at his muddy, singed labcoat. Undoing the snaps one by one, she began peeling it off him, pulling it down his arms and unhooking where it snagged on his metal arm, shucking it off and away. He coughed and looked away, eying the sandwich again, before he felt her hands at his chest once more, starting to undo the buttons of his soggy shirt as well. It made sense, of course, getting him out of the cold wet clothes. But still, he wasn’t used to…well- adorable, supernatural, amazingly strong undead women doing the undressing. His cheeks lit up from pink to red, swallowing audibly as she peeled it up and off him. He was left entirely bare from the waist up, feeling more than a bit exposed with his gaunt chest on display in front of her.  
  
“Uh…uhhh…” he stammered, shrinking back into his armchair as she leaned a little closer and went to softly run one claw along his stubbled chin with a look of concern. “Uh…I’m…fine?…Thanks?” Steam almost shot from his ears and nose as she reached around him, though it was only to draw another warm blanket around his bony shoulders and bare chest. He was glad he was a little covered up now, actually. At least she couldn’t see how rapidly he was breathing, the thought crossing his mind that she might be going for the buttons of his wet pants next.  
  
Instead she rested a knee on the cushion of his armchair, adjusting the blankets around him and speaking more words he couldn’t understand as she placed the hot cup of tea in his hand. With a shaky smile, he took a long sip, enjoying the way it warmed his cold bones and chased away the chill. Slurping it down, he started in on the sandwich as he eyed the jiangshi a little more carefully, the two watching one another in the light of the fireplace.  
  
“Don’t want you to think I’m not grateful, darl,” he said around a mouthful of bread and meat, ripping off the bite and swallowing it down. “Like I said, gonna take you out for an evening befitting a lady of your stature when this is all over. You’ve earned it. Yeah, proper gal like you deserves…er…all sorts of…”  
  
Her hand brushed his bare arm beneath the blanket. When had that gotten there?  
  
“Er…Miss Mei?…” he squeaked.  
  
She sniffed at him, and he saw the way the tip of her pink tongue traced along her teeny fangs and the inside of her lower lip. Damn these wet pants of his, the damp cloth was awfully clammy and awfully tight. And the way she was softly murmuring to him was not helping at all, a breathy sort of whisper as she eased her other knee onto the chair until she was almost straddling him. Junkenstein froze.  
  
She was leaning towards him again, his heart thudding against his ribs on the inside as his mind blanked out. _He wanted to reach for her, but wouldn’t that be unbefitting of the gentleman doctor he was supposed to be? What did she want? Didn’t women dislike that sort of thing? Was that rude? Should he touch her? Oh no, was she waiting on him? Just…grab something! Do something! Do anything!_  
  
His arm shot forward, blindly grasping out and finding her claw. Mei startled, soulful dark eyes looking back to his as his lithe fingers grasped between hers, their digits intertwining and squeezing as he leaned to give her…  
  
…  
  
A firm and hearty handshake.

 

Art from P-Cate! Check them out here for more great stuff! [pcate.tumblr.com](pcate.tumblr.com)


	3. Chapter 3

“A handshake, mate! A bloody handshake!” Junkenstein dragged his fingers down his face, digging them into the sallow flesh of his cheeks. “What was I thinking? I’ll tell you what I was thinking! I _wasn’t_ thinking! I wasn’t thinking and she’s probably halfway back to China by now to tell everyone about how I had a lady literally on top of my lap and I gave her a _handshake_!”  
  
The Monster responded with a low ‘ghhrrmm’ and that was all.  
  
“Do you think I don’t know that?! I’m blowing a bloody brain gasket over here. She looked real sad, said something in her gobbledygook, and then hopped off. Because who could blame her! A handshake?!” He howled and brought his forehead down into the table with a thunk.  
  
Scarecrow looked around unsurely, its lenses whirring with each little adjustment, before bringing a long and lanky arm up to pat its master’s hunched back in a poor pantomime of comfort. Junkenstein pushed it away brusquely, sending it tipping over to the floor with a straw-filled crash.  
  
“What do you know about fine ladies like her?! Nothing! And apparently I don’t either!” he snarled, gritting his teeth before trying to smooth back his wild head of shocked gray hair. Nearly falling to his death hadn’t phased him very much, but his panicked handshake and her reaction thereof had nearly shattered his world. In desperation, he turned to the larger figure across the table, oozing wisps of shadow as its jack-o-lantern head flickered eerily in the dim candlelight. “What about you? You’re a keen sort, I bet you got all sorts of advice for this sort of thing. You ever made it with a lady before you turned into a pumpkin? Or, were you always a pumpkin? I mean, not that a pumpkin couldn’t make it with a lady…Wait, could they? Could you? Did you?”  
  
“I don’t even want to be here,” The Reaper replied dryly. “Just give me the new schematics so I can _leave_.”  
  
“Do you think…erm…Maybe the Witch has any advice about-”  
  
“NO,” The Reaper snarled. “You are to focus on the tasks at hand. Pray that you have a better handle on your army than you do on your pathetic love life.”  
  
Dr. Junkenstein shot him an offended glare behind his goggles, rummaging through his papers before rolling them up and slamming the bundle into the Reaper’s outstretched claw. “Well howdoyado to you too, then. Hope you were nicer as a person than you are as a pumpkin, dipstick.”  
  
The Reaper didn’t bother with an answer, having listened to Junkenstein’s lovelorn rantings for the past twenty minutes before finally receiving the papers. Tucking them into the darkness of his cloak, he finally turned to go, heavy spiked bloods clunking to the door. For a moment he paused, before the jack-o-lantern turned to set its flickering eyes back on the scrawny figure of the doctor, who was now sprawled out across the entire paper-strewn table, spread-eagled and staring listlessly at the ceiling as if waiting for the end to finally come and claim him. The Reaper had never been fond of the Doctor and had always made that very clear…but no matter the insults or troubles sent his way, he had never him like this. Usually the Doctor was in some manic state or other; found halfway in or out of the guts of whatever robot or monstrosity he was building, tinkering with dangerous sciences and magics never meant for human hands, laughing, screaming, or a combo of the two, and chattering to himself and his handmade ‘friends’ nonstop.  
  
He didn’t even know the Doctor was capable of being sad. Especially over something like a fumbled encounter with a girl.  
  
Sighing, the Reaper shook his head and waved a hand. “Look…”  
  
Junkenstein didn’t look at him, and sighed like his world was ending instead.  
  
The Reaper grumbled. Why did people always come to someone like him with their problems? “Laying around and moping over them won’t help. If you care about this woman, show them. Figure out a way to get her to understand that you are sorry. Just don’t bother me or Our Lady about it any further. Do something useful, for once. Go apologize to your jiangshi…”  
  
“How am I s’posed to apologize to someone who don’t understand a word I tell ‘er?” Junkenstein whined aloud.  
  
He received no answer, and when he turned to look, the Reaper was already long gone.  
  
The Doctor lay there for a few minutes longer, sighing loudly and frequently for attention. Scarecrow, at a loss as to what to do, went limp and fell onto the table beside him, sighing as well. Eventually the Monster became tired of it, lifted one enormous arm, and with one sweep he pushed them both off the table and onto the floor. They both landed with a crash and after a few moments of silence from under the furniture, Junkenstein suddenly leapt upward with an energetic hop, hands on his hips as he faced down his creations.  
  
“You’re right!” he said, pointing to the uninterested Monster. “Brilliant idea, mate! Rally! Imagine, the great Dr. Jamison Junkenstein being defeated so easily! Oh-ho, I don’t think so, my friend! So the handshake thing was a bit of a blunder, yes, and I’m pretty sure she looked ready to cry when she ran out of there…but if she hasn’t left back for China, I still got time. What I need is a gesture. I need a grand gesture, just for her, just for my lovely assistant. So what if…” He trailed off for a moment, waving both hands as it to try and physically tie his thoughts together, snagging whatever spilled out of his brain and cobbling them together for coherence. Or at least a semblance of it. “So…what if I made her an assistant? Everyone likes assistants, don’t they? All right, get the shovels, boys, we’re going to need a few fresh bodies, some new electric coils, new clothes, probably a wig and some dentures-”  
  
The Monster snorted.  
  
“Hm, maybe not,” Junkenstein agreed. “Not enough time to make one of those. What else does she like? Not like she’s been able to tell me what she likes. What do lady sorts like? Chocolate candies? Expensive wines and teas? Sparkly jewelry?…Wait, aren’t those just things I like? Hrrmmm… What does a Jiangshi like?” He thought for a moment, tapping his pointed chin with a ‘hrrrmmm’, before his grin lit up. With a fabulous skipping motion, he made for the shelves of his study, leaping onto the rolling ladder and starting to rifle through his collections of books like a mad thing, sending them flying in all directions as he dug through them. Finally finding the ones he wanted, he gathered them into his arms and headed back for his table, dumping them open and searching through them frantically. “Hrmmm…Ji’an, Jiao, Jianbing, Jiujitsu…Jiangshi!”  
  
His mind racing, Junkenstein flipped open his book of Chinese characters and began sifting through them as well, snatching up a quill and ink as he began scribbling frantically. “Well, this makes about as much sense as she does, s’mostly in foreign text. All right, Jiangshi, the hopping ‘stiff corpse’ monster. Uh…something about ancient powers of evil, something something, absorbing power, flying…turning into wolves? Never seen her do that before, need to ask her about that one later. Here’s something about…Oh!”  
  
He tapped at his book, scribbling so hard that the quill bent and ink splattered over his freshly laundered labcoat. “Here’s a list of something; sticky rice, duck eggs, blessed chicken, and the…blood of a black dog?” He thought for a moment. “Huh. Well, I’ve heard the Chinese have some strange tastes. Sounds like a recipe, don’t you think? You know, come to think of it, I don’t think I’ve seen her eat anything yet. And she always looks so happy when I mention food, gets all…snuggly, and whatnot. Bet our cuisine must be awfully bland compared to all this, and she’s been so worried about me eating well, she hasn’t had the time to cook for herself. Poor dear, she must be starvin’ for something good. This is it, boys! Here’s our gesture!”  
  
He turned and shoved the open book into the Monster’s face with an audible smack, smashing the creature’s snout up. “This recipe! This one here! Let’s get to the kitchens! We’re gonna make something nice for Miss Mei!”  
  
***

 

* * *

  
  
“No. Yes. No. No. No. Yes.” Some time later, Dr. Junkenstein was rooting through his kitchen cupboards, flinging out pieces of equipment and generally making a mess. “Where’s the colander?! Wait, didn’t I use that for a generator bit? Er…Here, use this spoon thing with the holes in it instead. Where’s the pan I had?”  
  
Scarecrow, who was wearing the pan as a helmet, scrambled away with a guilty hunch, heading into the pantry. The Monster held an armload of cooking utensils and ingredients, spreading them all out on the crowded tabletops as his creator sent a bag of rice hurtling his way. The burners were already flaming hot, as the Monster dutifully emptied out the entire sack of rice into the cookpot, spilling out over the top and all over the floor. Junkenstein didn’t even notice, ripping up pages from every copy of every holy text he could find, scattering the pieces into a boiling pot with a still-raw pink chicken inside. “We’re gonna bless this chicken, we’re gonna bless the hell outta this chicken! Yeah! Get! Blessed!” He flung the covers of a book in with it before slamming the lid down, rubbing his hands together as the kitchen descended into further chaos. “Make sure the rice is good and sticky, it said it needs to be sticky! Now where did I put the…ah-ha!” He rummaged noisily through the cupboards before pulling out a small vial. “The blood of a black dog!”  
  
For once, this gave the Monster pause. He lifted his head, then turned and jabbed a thumb in a questioning way towards the tiny bottle. “Hrrmnn?”  
  
“Because it pays to be _prepared_ , that’s why. You never know when you might need something,” Junkenstein replied, upending the vial into the pot with the chicken. “You know, I’m pretty sure it said something about adding a virgin’s piss. But…ya know, probably a mistranslation and all, let’s not put that in. Besides! Hehe, who’s…who’s gonna find a virgin at this hour, right?!”  
  
The Monster looked at him.  
  
“RIGHT, MATE?!” Junkenstein shrilled.  
  
The Monster looked away again.  
  
Scowling, Junkenstein stirred at the thoroughly blessed chicken with a wooden spoon, turning as the kitchen door slammed. Scarecrow, still wearing its cooking pot askew on its head, had returned, holding an extremely angry duck in both hands and holding it out in offering. Junkenstein bared his teeth, pointing his sticky spoon at them both as the duck flailed its webbed feet and quacked madly. “ _Qwok qwok qwok qwoooook_.”  
  
“I said duck eggs! Duck _EGGS_ , you literally brainless cretin!”  
  
Scarecrow paused, then turned and threw the duck out the window, reaching into its tattered overalls pocket and offering a handful of eggs it had pilfered from the village pond.  
  
Junkenstein snatched them up greedily, finagling them between the fingers of his mechanical hand and cracking them one by one in rapid-fire succession, dumping them all at once into the slurry in the big cookpot. The golden yolks covered the red-spattered chicken, already boiling in its paper-scattered broth. “All right, boys. Everything’s coming along nicely. Yeah, get everything nice and hot. Make it strong, and make a lot of it!” He tasted the spoon, promptly spat it out onto the floor, and went back to stirring. “Aaachbt! Pleh! Well, so long as this makes her happy, eh? I really am a genius. I promised I’d take her out for dinner. Still am, mind you, once I’ve taken over the village and executed my enemies, gotten my to-do list to a more manageable level… Still going to take her out, but for now, what’s more romantic than a proper homecooked meal from yours truly, made specifically to her exquisite tastes?”  
  
He dumped in the rest of the dog’s blood as the rice started burning beside him, still stirring madly. “She’s gonna love this!"

  
  
***

* * *

  
  
Some time later, he limped across the stone ramparts, holding the huge pot by both handles and a carrot-embroidered kitchen towel. His metal peg leg clacked noisily on each step, the blue glass of his goggles shining in the moonlight. Lifting his voice, he wheedled aloud. “Mei? Meeeiiiiii, darl, you around here? Come on, sugar pea, let’s not avoid each other? I know what happened was…er….less than ideal, but-”  
  
He heard the familiar sound of hopping, and the jiangshi woman appeared from the shadow of the doorway up ahead. She still looked a little hurt, he thought, with those big dark eyes of hers shining behind her glasses, and only the tips of her little fangs appearing as white dots on her lower lip. Well, if he had his way of things, and he would, those eyes would be bright and happy, and she’d smile at him with all her teeth, even the sharp ones. He offered his own sharp grin, hefting the pot in hopeful offering. “Now, um…I’m aware that there may have been a slight miscommunication earlier. Language barrier and all, it’s completely understandable. But, being the upstanding gent that I am, I want to make it up to you.”  
  
“下次再谈这个问题吧…” she said, rubbing her arm a little with one claw and looking away from his pot.  
  
“Now now, let’s not write it all off yet, huh? Put a lot of hard work into the apology, I did. It’s an apology in physical form. Not that it tastes like sorrow, mind you, not like that. I did my research, found out that…well…you were probably just hungry, right?”  
  
She blinked and looked at him at that, seemingly recognizing at least a few words. Especially ‘hungry’. She hesitated, gazing at the man and pursing her lips before looking down bashfully, mumbling in her native tongue again.  
  
“Yeah! Yeah, you were just hungry, weren’t you? This is all just a little error, that’s all. Don’t worry, love, everyone makes mistakes. So…we can go back to the way things were, can’t we? You can be my lovely assistant, and I promise you, I promise you I will be more attentive to your needs!” he smiled.  
  
She eyed him a bit more, but he could see she was smiling a little. Hope fluttered in his heart valves, then practically blew up in his chest when she looked up and offered him a little nod. She even hopped forward a little, starting to reach for him with that adoring look in her eyes that he liked so much. But, he was still holding the surprise in the cookpot, and he couldn’t stop himself from fidgeting, tapping a bit from leg to peg and biting his lips before giggling and shoving the pot forward at her.  
  
“Wait! Wait, before we do all the um…the making-up bits, I want you to have this. I made it especially for you! Did all my research and spent all night on it, it’s something special from your homeland!”  
  
She looked a little confused, pointing to herself and the cookpot, sniffing a little before going to inspect it. She leaned forward…  
  
Junkenstein seized his chance, whipping the top off the pot as the steam wafted directly into her face. “Surprise!”  
  
It hit her full force, and she staggered as if struck. Far from the elated reaction he’d hoped for, his smile faded as she uttered the most horrible noise. It sounded like she was choking and trying to scream through it, her throat closing off as her jaws stretched open. Her fangs lengthened from her gums, still squeaking that awful noise as she grasped onto her neck with both claws. Her eyes rolled up and backward, until the light pink of the veins could be seen against the white sclera…and down she went onto the cold stone of the ramparts, landing in a sad heap of cloth as her spell paper came loose and went fluttering down beside her.  
  
Junkenstein stood stunned for a moment, looking down at her. “Um…Mei?”  
  
There was no reply. Her eyes remained whited out, her face stuck in an expression of pure agony, and she lay where she had fallen.  
  
“Mei? MEI?! MEEEIII!” He threw the cookpot aside, clattering aside and sending the foul-looking slurry mixture all over the ground as he threw himself beside her. He shook her, poked her, pulled her stiff body awkwardly into his arms as he hunched over the seemingly re-dead woman in his lap, rocking her back and forth. “No no no no no…Mei, sweet potato, don’t do this. Don’t do this. Come on, up and at ‘em! I made…I made your favorite…”  
  
He looked over at the cooking pot, then down at the blanked face of his lovely assistant. “Your favorite?…”  
  
He was gathering her into his arms, preparing to run her back to his lab and to get  help, when he heard a different voice from the same direction Mei had come from.  
  
“Allo? Mei? Dr. Junkenstein? What’s all this commotion? I did not expect-”  
  
The Witch of the Wilds paused as she came into the moonlight, her expression going stern and extremely unhappy as she beheld the sight before her. Placing a hand on her hip, she stared the Doctor down, and he could feel the air around him turn icy and cold as she asked a little too gently. “Good Doctor Junkenstein…What has happened?”  
  
He looked down to the unconscious jiangshi with a grimace. “I…I dunno. I made her a stew. Tried to give some to her and she just…she just…”  
  
The Witch sniffed, holding a gloved hand elegantly to her nose as she made her way over to the abandoned cookpot and the spilled contents. “A stew? You think you can feed her stew? Goodness me, that stench! Doctor…what did you put in this stew?”  
  
“I found the recipe in an old book, written in foreign. Translated it myself, it’s a stew from her homeland made for jiangshis! Um…what was…” His mind raced, trying to recall all the ingredients he’d used. “Um. Sticky gluten rice, duck eggs, blessed chicken, the blood of a black dog…definitely not any virgin piss or anything but, I made her…the stew?…”  
  
The Witch clamped a hand over her face, and for a moment Junkenstein couldn’t tell if she was angry or laughing as her shoulders shook. When she turned back to him, he could tell she definitely was not laughing. “That was not a recipe for _stew_! Do you realize what you have done? You oafish man, don’t you know what those were?”  
  
He looked down at Mei. “Um…”  
  
The Witch glared at him, gesturing to the other woman’s unresponsive body. “Congratulations, Doctor. You combined everything you ever needed to _defeat_ a jiangshi…”

 

Art by the amazing P-cate, go check them out! <http://pcate.tumblr.com/>


	4. Chapter 4

Junkenstein sat with Mei’s body propped up against him, his tongue stuck out in concentration as he ran a hairbrush through her locks, carefully bundling it with one hand before snapping the circlet back around her new pigtails. “There we go! You look good, darl, I think I’m getting better at this. No more tangles for you, eh?” He eased her stiff form back down into his bed, tucking the quilt around her chin before pausing. “Oh! Looks like you’ve uh…s’popped open again; here, lemme get that for you.” One of the jiangshi’s eyes had half opened, staring blank and white as the doctor leaned across to lick his broad thumb and very carefully push her eyelid back closed. “There! Pretty as a picture! I’m just…I’m just gonna be over there if you need me.”  
  
His own eyes felt droopy and tired, and the bags under them had turned almost black with exhaustion. He had shut himself into his personal quarters days ago, with piles upon piles of books and papers. He hadn’t been eating or drinking, hadn’t been sleeping, and definitely had not been bathing. Even he had to admit that he was beginning to stink a bit, spending all  his time hunched over his notes of translated Chinese characters, useless taosims, charms, and manuscripts as he tried to understand everything he had on hand about the jiangshi. Everything had to be cross-referenced and then corrected, filling in the bits that were lost in translation, piecing together what he could…but he’d always been good at piecing things together.  
  
“Don’t worry about a thing, love, we’re almost there. You’re going to be right as rain. Here, you got lots of room if you need it; you got the bed all to yourself again, wouldn’t want to suggest anything improper while you’re asleep. Don’t you fret, I’m going to keep working and make it all better. Don’t let anyone say that Dr. Junkenstein ever gives up on a project.” He gently patted her head before moving back to his desk, slumping down into the chair and taking up his pen. The words and symbols all over the papers were starting to blend and blur together, an incomprehensible mess of ink and parchment as he tried to focus.  
  
Sure he was feeling a bit tired and all, but he had to keep at it. His genius was the only one who could fix her, after all.  
  
He still blearily remembered falling to his knees with the jiangshi in both arms, pleading with the Witch to bring her back. But the Witch had turned him away time and time again. Mei was his servant, not hers. She owed the Witch no debt and had never been bound to her will, not like Junkenstein or the Reaper. Mei was not one of hers, and no matter what the good doctor had tried, the jiangshi’s life could not be bartered for. He had asked for the Summoner, and received a curt reply that the ancient Dragon’s power had no way to revive a creature that had already felt the ice of death. He had even asked for the advice of the Reaper, but the Reaper had never bothered with an answer at all. So it was up to him to undo what he had done.  
  
There had been a particular character that had caught his attention, seeing it used time and time again. 血液, for ‘blood’. Over and over, it spoke of blood. The jiangshi were not precisely like their Western vampire counterparts, but they had a specific interest in their victim’s essences and their blood. And though Dr. Junkenstein didn’t know how to harvest something as nebulous as ‘essence’, he knew how to get blood.  
  
And not just any blood…  
  
***

* * *

  
  
He’d taken a bath and forced a meal into his jaws, waiting for the moon to rise into the sky. The Monster stood firmly by his side, his gut shuddering occasionally as his piecemeal lungs struggled to breathe life into his massive form. Junkenstein fussed nervously at his hair, still a little damp where it had formed into a spike on one side and dried that way, refusing to change shape now. Scarecrow was nowhere to be seen, though that was hardly unusual. A small group of zomnics drifted around the enormous lab space, carrying tools and stacking equipment…And a new figure lay under a large white cloth on the same table that had birthed his beloved first creations.  
  
He waited, chewing at the tip of his glove nervously, the rubber catching in a disgusting textural way between the tips of his teeth, squeaking as he gnawed and waited. Occasionally he heard the opening and shutting of doors as the zomnics moved around the tower and courtyard, but they were not the sounds he was listening for. The only solace was that this breed of company was never late, and he waited for them with bated breath as the clock on his wall ticked down the minutes to their alloted meeting time.  
  
The Monster tilted his head down to him, and offered one of his very, very rare instances of input. “Hrm…Bad idea.”  
  
Junkenstein’s glare snapped upward, baring his teeth with the sharp canines still sunk into his glove. “Begging your pardon for my language, mate, but that’s tough tits for you! Because it’s the only idea we got. You know what to do! I’m going to bring her back, just like I brought you back. And this is the only way I can do it.”  
  
The Monster rumbled unhappily and turned back, lifting his ponderous chin as footsteps sounded from down the hallway.  
  
Junkenstein beamed, clasping her hands together as the doors to his lab creaked open with the squeal of old wood and even older hinges. The Reaper came first, metal boots heavy against the cracked tiles, the grin of his jack-o-lantern head throwing eerie shadows over his leather-clad form, coat trailing behind him. The Summoner was second, scaly hide emanating heat and malice as her eyes glowed wild yellow against the darkness of her scales. And behind them came the Witch herself, carrying her broom in one hand and not nearly so intimidating as her servants; her expression kind but cold, and her soft lips curled into that ever-present smile that never truly reached her eyes, her presence a potent mixture of both offputting and soothing that Junkenstein had never been able to understand.  
  
Her attendants stood aside to let her pass as the Witch strode forward, resting her broom on the ground before removing it again with a little curl of her lip…The floor was too filthy even for her broom. Glancing back up to the twitching Dr. Junkenstein, she placed a gloved hand to her hip, her eyes drawn past him to the sheet-covered form on the slab. “I understand that you think this is worth gathering us all here, good Doctor?”  
  
Junkenstein wheezed out a shrill giggling laugh, tapping his fingers together nervously. “Ladies and gentlemen! I’ve had some spare time on my hands as of late, and I happened to remember an old prototype I’d been working on ages ago. I’ve improved on the zomnic formula to make them better than ever. But we’re still missing something, don’t you think? The zomnic shock troops and the rank and file are all well and good, but what we need is something a bit more…in-your-face, shall we say?”  
  
The Summoner examined her claws, somehow managing to look the most unimpressed out of all his audience. “You brought us here to look at an old prototype?”  
  
He tried not to bristle at the criticism, tried to remember Mei’s sleeping face on his pillow instead. “N-not at all, my dear Lady! I brought you here to look at its improvements. If we put a few of these out onto the battlefield during our attack, it’ll make them think twice, if they’re still alive to think at all! So, for your approval, I want to present you…The Harvester!” With a curt nod, he signaled the Monster, and the sheet was yanked from the table to reveal his newest creation.  
  
The zomnic below was thin and scrawny, with skinny metal digitrade legs and curved claws. Its top half resembled something of a cocoon, almost a thin metal barrel with vertical slits up and down its circumference, up to a metal skull-like head, its mouth brimming with needle-sharp spikes, on top of a spring-loaded coil neck. It wasn’t really the most elegant thing he’d ever made. Honestly when he looked at it now, it looked a bit topheavy and silly, and judging by the expressions of his ‘business partners’, they thought even less of it. He quickly lifted a hand, bearing a remote control panel, and fumbled with the switches. “Unassuming now, isn’t it? But wait until you see what she’s capable of!”  
  
With a press of the button, the Harvester whirred to life, its eyelights flickering on and glowing bright blue as electricity crackled over it, shuddering to life. It launched abruptly upright, landing with a click of rigged-together metal feet as numerous arms extended and unfolded from the length of its body, unfurling into multi-jointed appendages that each ended with a sharp metal scythe. Junkenstein made it perform a little twirl, its movements rapid, but unnatural and jerky as its arms whirled and spun, transforming it into a whirling dervish of deadly metal blades, whistling through the air as it tromped forward at them.  
  
The Reaper tilted his head and for once seemed thoughtful. “I can’t believe I’m saying this but…this one isn’t that bad.”  
  
The Witch tapped her chin and nodded. “I suppose we could use a more deft sort of troop to deal with melee distractions. What else can it do?”  
  
A zomnic target-bot drifted forward at that, and the Harvester turned its head and immediately set upon it, scythes whirring and slicing as its unlucky victim was shredded into parts with a screech of metal. The next several target-bits suffered much the same as the Harvester gave several agile little leaps, slashing apart anything that stood in its way. But then it shuddered hard as electricity suddenly crackled around its lithe body, head jerking to and fro before its glowing eyes set upon its next target, and it leapt again…  
  
This time it slammed into the ground next to the Reaper, and its scythes swung straight for him. The pumpkin-headed specter managed to dodge the first two, much to his credit, but the third and fourth caught him across the arm and torso, spraying black ichor as the ghostly figure bellowed. The Summoner’s yellow eyes widened and she tried to step back as the berserk Harvester turned upon her next, its blades clanking against her hard dragon-like scales.  
  
The Witch turned upon the doctor, eyes narrowed. “Turn it off!”  
  
Junkenstein slammed at the buttons, “It’s not listening! It’s not listening!”  
  
The Summoner’s armor broke, a long cut opening up along her upper arm as it bled molten yellow-red. She clutched at it and fell back, just as gunshots echoed through the hall. The Reaper was retaliating, his lower half shrouded in black smoke as the bullets clicked and clanged off the Harvester’s steel form, bouncing off its armor plating where it did not manage to rip through. Junkenstein made a show of slamming his fist into the buttons of its controls, then paused when the metal monstrosity turned its eyes not upon the Witch…but onto him. With a warped cry of mock vocal-cords, the Harvester set upon him, one of its blades catching him across the chest and another along his shoulder and nicking his cheek. He fell, red fountaining out over his once clean labcoat, the control panel shattering under him.  
  
Still, even as he grasped at his new wounds, Dr. Junkenstein watched as the Harvester finally -finally- fixated on the Witch herself. It advanced, its blades dripping with blood of all sorts, as the Witch took several steps back, cursing under her breath. But before it could reach her, The Reaper blocked its path yet again, more gunshots ripping through it and sending two  of its arms clattering to the ground. And Junkenstein almost screamed aloud when his Monster joined the fray, grasping one huge hand onto its spiked head and pulling it up away, crushing and ripping even as the Harvester flailed its scythes at its bulky form. With several more wrenching blows and the squeal of metal, the blade-bearing omnic monstrosity went limp, sparks occasionally erupting from its twitching body.  
  
Blood still oozed down his front and onto the ground around him as Junkenstein clutched his chest. The rush of adrenaline in his ears almost drowned out the words of those that gathered around him, shouting insults and abuse at his stupidity. He saw the wounds on the Reaper and the Summoner above him, and only the presence of the Witch and his Monster kept the two from destroying him outright as he lay bleeding on the floor. His eyes darted under his goggles, searching for any sign of a cut or gash on the Witch herself, but his heart sank when he found none, her skin as young and beautiful and unmarred as she had always been.  
  
He mumbled apologies and excuses, promising to do better, that this was just an unfortunate accident. The Reaper was not convinced, his gravely tones still raving. The Summoner even spat on him, a glob of molten saliva oozing down his coat and eating away the fabric. Junkenstein quailed and shook slightly, and the Monster rumbled dangerously and moved to shield him, grasping him by the peg leg and pulling him out of the fray, smearing red as he went.  
  
“The next time one of your creations goes awry, I’m putting it- and you- in the ground,” the Reaper snarled after him. “You’re lucky it didn’t manage to hurt Our Lady or I would have destroyed your mad soul!”  
  
“I told you including this lunatic was a worthless endeavor!” The Summoner ran a claw ruefully along her wounded arm. “If your zomnics were not necessary to this plan, I would do this world a favor by sparing it from your further ineptitude!”  
  
The Witch waved a hand to calm her associates, speaking platitudes and calming things that Junkenstein could barely hear. “Well, it seems as though we have seen enough here for tonight, I think. The prototype I liked, I think. The mess that came from it? Well…” She gestured to the wounded. “Come now, my friends, I will take you back and heal your wounds. Although I believe I will let the good Dr. Junkenstein think on his mistakes for just a bit longer.”  
  
The Summoner and the Reaper vanished in a spout of black flame just as Dr. Junkenstein slipped into unconsciousness, still holding his wounded front.  
  
***

* * *

  
  
Things returned to a tenuous quiet despite the carnage around them, as the Witch tapped a finger to her chin and watched as the Monster leaned down to scoop up the doctor’s limp body. “You know,” she said in an almost conversational tone, “This was all a rather bad idea.”  
  
“Mmm,” the Monster agreed.  
  
“I will admit, I actually do like the prototype. We might be able to use it later, although I believe there are more…pressing matters to attend to. It’s a shame he ruined the thing with this little plan of his.”  
  
“Ghmm.”  
  
“Still, there’s almost a part of me that’s impressed that he had the gall. And another part that was impressed that he actually managed to get my servants to bleed. I suppose it’s the only way he could get it. His acting could use a bit of improvement, but I appreciate the effort,” she waved a hand, a little flicker appearing in her palm before going to hand the Monster a tiny vial. “This is a single drop of my blood. If he is planning what I believe he is planning, there may actually be a small chance for it to work. Or well, I hope it does. I’d love to be able to invite Mei for tea again, she’s a breath of fresh air in the chaos of this place.”  
  
The Monster nodded and took the vial carefully into one huge palm, before offering up the Doctor’s sprawled form. “Mm?”  
  
“He will live, and really, it’ll be a good reminder about caution during these schemes of his. Do let me know if all this works, won’t you? This has been…amusing.”  
  
With that, the Witch vanished in a whirl of black shadow, and was gone.  
  
The Monster placed one huge hand to his creator’s chest, staunching the blood under his fingers as he carried him away.  
  
***

* * *

  
  
Junkenstein awoke later, his chest and shoulder crudely bandaged, slumped in his favorite armchair in his study. He groaned, clutching at the stained gauze, muscles sore and his mind still delirious from stress and lack of sleep. He coughed wetly and heard the answering shuffle of someone nearby, as his Monster loomed up out of the dark and into the fire’s light. Junkenstein allowed himself to relax slightly. “Did we get everything?”  
  
“Mm,” the Monster confirmed.  
  
Scarecrow appeared on the other side of his chair, straw shuffling with a dry hush as it held out containers filled to the brim with blood; the black sludge from the Reaper, the molten yellow of the Dragon’s servant, the bright red from Junkenstein himself…and there was the teeny, unassuming vial that glowed eerily from within. Her blood. The Witch’s blood. Strange. He couldn’t remember seeing his creation wound the Witch, but he must have simply been mistaken. He had all the blood he needed now.  
  
“Victoryyyy!” he managed weakly, lifting both fists in his chair. “All right, naptime’s over, boys. I’ll take these!” He snatched the vials from Scarecrow’s hands, heading for the set of vials and tubes he had rigged up on the table earlier. Turning on the burners, he went right back to work. Far from the chaotic mess he had caused down in the kitchens, now he had the need of being precise and careful, no matter how much his hands were shaking. Dumping the blood from vial to vial, he carefully measured, poured, and stirred. The blood was not the sort to mix naturally, and he had done all the research he could on getting them to meld. The Summoner, a being of fire, and the Reaper, a dead thing of black cold, were not exactly close friends in business relationship or blood types, and it had taken all his chemical finesse to get them to blend. Perhaps it had been a good thing the Harvester had accidentally provided so much more of Junkenstein's own blood then, a human blood that the other blood types could blend into and dominate, adding in more and more of his own red as it was threatened to be consumed by the yellow and black. When the balancing act was perfected and boiled and blended and finally stabilized…then came the final ingredient; the Witch’s own blood, that single, precious drop of glowing red that was so much stronger than his own. The droplet bobbled and wobbled, clinging reluctantly to the lip of the vial before gravity finally seized hold, dripping into the mixture. There was no crackle of electricity, no steam or smoke, not even the faintest of booms, but Junkenstein felt something ripple across the mixture, change it, and its power changed tenfold.  
  
Very carefully, he took the mixture and dumped a portion into the ink pot, taking the jiangshi’s spell paper and her old peacock feather. Dipping it into the mixture, he carefully painted the Chinese symbols he had made before, the bloody mixture seeping into the paper, redder than ink and blacker than blood. With his tongue stuck out and biting until it almost bled even more, he carefully swirled the pen into the last symbol, finishing the new spell into an infinitely more powerful version.  
  
“Bring her in!” Junkenstein shrilled quickly, just as the door opened and the Monster reappeared, cradling her stiff body in both powerful hands. He brought her down to Junkenstein’s level, the Monster shifting her into one massive arm so his other could pry her fanged jaws open. The doctor took the remainder of the blood mixture and, after pulling her tongue out of the way with two delicate pinching fingers, poured it down her cold and unresponsive throat. Pushing her jaws shut once more, he attached the spell paper to her hat and then draped it across her forehead as the charm fluttered slightly, the symbols on it seeming to glow for a moment before going dull.  
  
Junkenstein held his breath as he and the monster leaned in expectantly. Scarecrow, lurking nearby, also tried to lean in, only to have Dr. Junkenstein roughly grab onto its head and shove it away again. He and the Monster listened quietly…and then they heard the jiangshi swallow. Smacking away the sticky blood concoction in her throat with a few gulps, Mei’s eyes rolled back down into focus, turning from unseeing white back to their usual gentle darkness as she blearily adjusted her glasses as though that would help.  
  
Junkenstein didn’t feel tired anymore, a too-wide grin stretching nearly across the entire width of his skull, baring almost every single one of his sharp teeth. Especially when she coughed a little and tried to find her voice, whispering aloud in her strong accent, “D…doc-..tor?”  
  
“Welcome back, Mei.”


	5. Chapter 5

“You…You tried to make me a stew? And it was so bad it killed me?” Mei folded her arms, long sleeves shuffling over her black claws.  
  
“Okay look, that was an easy mistake to make. And for your information, I poured my heart and soul into that stew! That stew was going to make you swoon! And uh…I guess it did, just really not in the way I expected. So that’s about half a success?”  
  
She looked at him, slowly pushing her glasses up her nose, and Dr. Junkenstein quailed a bit.  
  
“All right, a failure! We can count that as a failure if you like, turtle dove. I’ll give you that one. It wasn’t supposed to, ya know, _off_ you.”  
  
“Open.”  
  
Mei had recovered quickly, with the potent new blood coursing through her system. And before Junkenstein could seem to blink or even welcome her back properly, he had been carried up to his room and deposited into the sick bed where she had been laying for so many days. Not long after, she had bustled in with a no-nonsense air and a tray with a steaming bowl of soup and crusty bread, which she had insisted on feeding him, sitting in a chair next to his sagging four-poster bed. Even now, he obediently leaned forward and opened his jaws, looking a little chagrined as the jiangshi deposited another spoonful of chicken and rice into his mouth.  
  
“You don’t need to,” he mumbled around the food. “Can feed m’self.”  
  
She pointed the spoon at him sternly. “The others say you have not been eating at all, worse than usual. And you were hurt, during the um…the plan. To help make me better…Thank you.”  
  
He opened his mouth for more soup, blowing at the wafting steam before speaking around a mouthful of broth and meat. It was probably the heat from the soup that made his cheeks pink up, coughing lightly. “N-no problem, darl. I mean, it was an honest mistake for a gentleman to make, so I had to come up with an honest solution. Managed to get all the blood I needed to get you back up and ticking like normal. I don’t know what’s in the Witch’s blood, but the language thing is definitely a bonus. You know, if she gave me a little more, maybe I could-”  
  
He found another spoonful of soup cutting off his words as Mei leaned over. “No! You really shouldn’t bother her too much, she’s very busy…and you, um, did have one of your creations attack and wound her and her followers to steal their blood and…Why don’t you focus on getting better!” She smiled down at him, the dots on her plump cheeks stretching with the motion, little dimples appearing around her fanged lips. “And it is nice to be able to understand you a little better. Or well, I’m still not sure I _understand_ you, but…”  
  
He wilted visibly.  
  
Mei smiled again quickly. “But that’s all right. I knew you were strange and brilliant right after meeting you. You woke me up and after hundreds of years, I was suddenly surrounded by such odd, amazing new things, all made by one person? I knew you were very special…even if you are a little difficult to understand sometimes, even with language. And you need to take better care of yourself. Open.” She spooned in the last of the soup, pausing before tracing one claw along his pale jaw. “And, you weren’t afraid of me. You’re the only human I know who surrounds himself with monsters and doesn’t see them as monsters.”  
  
“Who could ever see you a monster, love? Now my other creations, I’ll admit, they might be a bit of a hard swallow. Mostly Scarecrow. Especially Scarecrow. But you? Sure you’re a little pale and maybe a tiiiiiny bit clammy, but really, so am I. We both got sharp chompers, but they look real good on us! And you may be an undead creature living off stolen blood and the essence of the living, but honestly, I’ve eaten worse. You’re a real good cook, by the by.”  
  
She gave him another little smile, this one a little more sly with her fangs glinting. “I wish I could say the same, but that stew…”  
  
He groaned and leaned back against his pillows. “You’re gonna dog me about that one, aren’t you?”  
  
“Well, you did kill me. Again. And you don’t even understand how hard it is to kill one of my kind. It’s almost impressive, even if you got it wrong,” she nodded.  
  
“I hear that a lot, actually.”  
  
“But you did bring me back again, and almost killed yourself doing it.” She leaned to adjust his covers, examining the bandages over the massive cuts on his chest, placing her gloved claw against his ribs to trace the wound and felt his lungs flutter a little beneath her touch. “How are you feeling?”  
  
“Oh, everything’s apples, now that I know you’re back. And with your soup and all. You sure know how to make a bloke feel better.”  
  
Her dark eyes slanted towards him a bit from behind her glasses. “If…you want, I could make you feel even better? Maybe celebrate a bit? Help you relax, if you’re feeling up to it? We could-”  
  
He smiled back at her, patting his stomach. “Oh, I couldn’t eat another bite, but thanks. Honestly, I feel ace. I’ll just finish up some of the work around here. Be a sweet peach and get me my lab coat, eh?” Before she could stop him, he held his shoulder and eased up out of the bed, movements still sluggish as he started pulling on his shirt and fresh clothes before she could really voice her disagreement. “Argh, have you seen the thing? Where’s the thing?! Oh there, it is. Gotta start making things up to the Witch and the others so they don’t just off me in my sleep one of these nights, eh? Darl, coat?”  
  
With a bit of a disappointed look, she reached up to start draping his lab coat around his bony shoulders. “I meant…er…Right away, Dr. Junkenstein…”  
  
***

* * *

  
  
He kept making silly mistakes; putting in two drops where it should have been one, misplacing papers under other papers, or losing things altogether. True, he’d always done that, and very frequently- but this was worse than usual. The exhaustion must have been getting to him, but with Mei back and everyone else angry at him, he had a lot to do to make sure their plan of attack went off successfully enough that they would forget his folly. Even if this was another successive night without any rest and some of the last zomnics were turning out a little odd, and he’d nearly burnt his remaining hand of a few times, this was more of a matter of pride. Nobody would doubt Dr. Jamison Junkenstein after all this was over…  
  
“Doctor? Doctor?…”  
  
A snore escaped his nostrils and he startled awake, abruptly realizing his head had been drooping perilously close to one of the sharp metal bits scattered around his table. Through the fog in his brain he heard that familiar voice calling to him from somewhere up the stairs. Pushing his chair away from his lab table with a screech, he ambled towards it, the metal of his peg leg thunking and echoing up the stairwell. “Huh? Is everything all right, sugar pea? Honey bee? Soy sauce bear? Uh…Rice and beans?” He held his spinning head for a moment as the pet names started to go off the rails. “Mei? Where you at, darl?”  
  
There was a little noise behind the door of his study and he tilted his head as he opened the door, squeaking noisily as he peeked in before moving inside. He saw nothing, standing in front of the roaring fireplace and scratching at his wild hair. “You in here? Mei, did you need me? If you’re in here, just say aaaaaaAAAUUUGGGHHHH!”  
  
A shape coalesced out of the darkness from the top of the book shelf, her powerful legs springing her almost off the ceiling as she descended on the shrieking scientist. She bowled him over, knocking him flat onto his back on top of the animal hide rug in front of the hearth, bringing him to the ground even as her arm wrapped around him to cradle his wounded upper section. He fell backward, sprawling out his wiry form as he struggled to lift himself onto his elbows, goggles reflecting blue light up at her and almost hiding his shocked expression. Lifting herself up from where she sat astride his midsection, she curled a delicate claw around their straps and went to ease them up and off his head. “ _Nǐ hǎo_ , doctor.”  
  
His face grew steadily redder, starting from his cheeks and spreading outward to splotch his skin down around his ears and neck. “H-hehe! Well, you sure got me, love! Wh-why don’t we just-”  
  
She dropped his goggles off to the side with a little thud, tightening her knees on either side of him. “You like me, Dr. Junkenstein?”  
  
“O-of course I do! You’re the best assistant I ever had, and I promise you that once I rule this place, we’ll do all sorts of proper things together like dates, chocolates and flowers, normal things like-”  
  
“I like you too. But I am not normal,” she said gently, bending her elbows so she leaned down atop him. “We are not normal.”  
  
He swallowed noisily. “Okay, point there. Uh, guess I never really done this sort of thing before…I mean, I have! Lots of times! With all sorts! Just a little startled, was all, not used to ladies physically jumping on me and- nnnggghhh-” His voice changed into a high-pitched gurgle as the jiangshi sat back, sliding herself along his slender torso and grinding down before sitting up just atop his groin.  
  
“We don’t need flowers or chocolates. I’ve been trying to tell you this whole time that I like you.” She tilted her head down at him, lips pursing a bit petulantly around her fangs. “I like you a lot. I want…just you. Is that too much? Do you want me to stop?”  
  
His arms flew around her of their own accord. “No! No, I like you too! Just, I was trying to do things the right way! The way you deserve! And then I sort of killed you and all, and then had to bring you back and thought they might kill me for it, and I thought you’d be mad and I’m kinda tired and everyone’s pissed at me, and I just-” Her clawed glove’s finger suddenly came to rest on his lips and he stared up at her, a drop of sweat rolling down his temple.  
  
“Kiss?” She asked gently, and he nodded dumbly as she removed her finger and replaced it with her own lips with no hesitation.  
  
Dr. Junkenstein’s eyelids fluttered slightly, his fingers tightening slowly against the fabric of her robes. He’d had a few stolen kisses in his youth, back before the villagers had started to avoid him. When had that been? How long had he been locked in these lonely halls? He vaguely remembered blond hair and a green dress, a quick press of the lips and a grope on the bottom behind the tavern before she’d lost her nerve and made an excuse and fled. He couldn’t really remember much else. Maybe it had been a little warmer, with less fangs and less tongue, but also far less enthusiasm. Mei’s mouth tasted like strange spices on top of the iron tang of even stranger, otherworldly blood, and she showed no signs of stopping or fleeing. He made a little noise, and her head tilted as she deepened her kiss further, and he realized he was supposed to open his mouth and kiss her back.  
  
His mechanical arm seized around her shoulder, pulling her down towards him, and he felt her grin against his lips. She was liking it! She was liking it, and he was definitely liking it, and her mouth tasted so good once he got used to it all, and maybe he was using just a little too much tongue and there was just a little too much saliva, and for a moment he panicked when she drew away. But after a moment he realized it was to let him breathe, sucking in air through his open lips, down to lungs he hadn’t realized were aching. Greed got the better of him, and he lifted his head to try and follow after her, cupping the back of her head to bring her back down.  
  
They kissed again, then again, and again; and then there was a sharp sensation in his lower lip and the taste of blood- his own blood- overwhelmed him. He jolted back a little, his tongue moving to the little pierced area on the inside of his lower lip, and Mei looked on the verge of panic as she sputtered, “Sorry! Sorry! I’m sorry!” and tried to pull away. But the mad doctor merely stared up at her for a moment before dragging her back down, kissing her again, and her eyes shot open as his fangs closed down on her lip as well. She did not bleed, barely felt the sting of his sharp canines, but it seemed to startle her for a moment before melting into his grip.  
  
When he managed to finally draw back again, a smear of red across his lip, he looked up at her breathlessly, head falling back against the animal skin rug.  
  
“Uh,” he said. “Th-that’s…that’s real nice? You were wantin’ to, this whole time?”  
  
She nodded.  
  
“Hell’s bells, I’ve been an idiot.”  
  
She nodded again, but smiled. “Well…I wanted to do more than that?”  
  
The jiangshi sat up, legs still astride his hips, and his eyes nearly fell out of his head when he saw her clawed gloves move to the front of her robes, starting to undo the snaps of the crane sigil upon her chest, twisting and pulling at her buttons. A very undignified noise like air squealing through a pinched balloon came from out of his nose, watching her every move. They’d always looked ample, bound under that embroidery of the bird, anyway, but he never thought she’d be here like this, with him, pulling her robes open and unbinding the cloth that wrapped around her chest…until they finally sprang free, falling from the cloth bindings and bouncing in an impossibly soft, fleshy manner right in front of his face. His pupils dilated, and for a moment he thought that he could feel his nose bleeding as well as his lip, from some wild misfire inside his head as all his brainmatter tried to cram together at the front of his skull, near his eyes, trying to get a look. All thoughts of gentlemanly manners were driven from his mind.  
  
_Breasts…Big, beautiful, bouncing breasts…_  
  
Mei blinked down at the unmoving man, a string of red-tinted drool running down the side of his mouth. Adjusting her glasses, she went to take his hand, frozen on the side of her ribs. He didn’t even seem to notice as she carefully peeled the glove from him, her fingers curling around his before gently guiding his hand inside the front of her open robe. The first touch of his skin against her chest almost seemed to electrify him, his hand jolting in her grip. But she stayed firm, and another brush of his hand against hers soon made it clear that he was not only allowed, but encouraged. His hand slid inside the draping fabric, tracing the curve of her chest as he shuddered beneath her.  
  
“Soft…soft, soft, soooo soft…” he mumbled, still drooling as he brought his other hand into play, massaging and squeezing, not even daring to blink, like she might disappear in that split second if he even once closed his eyes. She merely ran her pink tongue along her fangs, leaning down so he could bury his face into the top of them. His pointed nose huffed audibly as he nuzzled into her cleavage, his fingers still rubbing into the plush flesh on either side.  
  
Her hips were grinding down on his, a slow back and forth as she rode him. Combined with her strange kisses and the feel of those _amazing_ breasts, his trousers were feeling unpleasantly tight, the pressure in his groin even stronger than the feelings he got when he saw electricity surging through metal, or a nice big explosion, or the rush of triumph and discovery on a successful new invention. Those were pants-tighteners all right, but this?… Why was he even wearing pants, especially ones that seemed several sizes too small all of a sudden?  
  
The mad scientist almost whimpered when she pulled him out of her chest, but she shushed him, laying him out on his back on the animal hide, the fire crackling merrily behind her and outlining her form in red light. Despite her shadowed features, he could see the glint of pearly white as her fangs lengthened from out of her gums, hanging over her lower lip. Dipping down next to his ear, she whispered one soft word.  
  
“…Bite?”  
  
He nodded.  
  
Mei’s claws reached up to grasp his hair, pulling his chin up and baring his long neck. Her mouth opening wide, she aimed for the pulsing vein beneath and bit down, her fangs piercing into his pale throat. Junkenstein’s jaw dropped, unable to make a sound beyond a tiny wheeze as his eyes flickered shut, darting wildly beneath dark lids. The beating of his heart thudded loudly in his ears, a potent mixture of nervous adrenaline, and trying to make up for the lost essence that was being drained down the hungry jiangshi’s throat. She suckled audibly at the flesh, purple and red bruising appearing under her tongue and teeth as she devoured him. The sluggish twitching of the man beneath her was hardly unusual, but what was unusual was his…eagerness. Far from afraid of the monster atop him, he blindly curled one arm, his hand grasping onto the back of her head and pulling her into him. His lips made wordless shapes, mouthing “More…more…more…”  
  
She gave him more, even as she took more from him. The mad grinding against him continued, the bulge tangible even through the fabric of his trousers and lab coat. He twitched and kicked out one leg, his hips surging up against her all on their own. The friction! The friction and the overwhelming sensation of the biting melded together until he was a mindless thing beneath her, unable to stop the upward motion of his thrusting hips, planting his foot and peg against the ground to brace himself and lift up into her. Like a damn brainless animal, humping uselessly away at her, that’s what he was. He pulled her hips down, clawing and grasping at the top of her pants. Had to get them off. No fabric. No more anything separating them. He could figure out what to do on his own, just let instinct guide him. Give him more… _More…more…more…_  
  
“Nnnnghhhaaah!” It was a strange sound, guttural and wild. Probably him making it, then. He wasn’t sure anymore. It didn’t matter anymore.  
  
And then she gave one last hard suck to his throat, and he wasn’t even aware of what happened when his vision whited out, and something tightened and then was set loose all at once. His vision was white, then gray, with little tinges of red on the edges, and then black.  
  
***

* * *

  
  
He awoke some hours later, feeling more drained and relaxed than he could ever remember feeling. The roaring fire warmed his body and helped soothe the tingling in his limbs, and when he shifted them, he felt movement against his side. Mei lay cuddled against him, leaning to press soothing wet kisses against his neck when she felt him awaken. Her robes were closed and buttoned, chaste as ever, and she rested her chin on his shoulder to look at him adoringly as he turned his head.  
  
“How are you feeling?” she asked softly.  
  
He giggled deliriously. There weren’t really words he knew to describe it, so he muttered something about being ‘okay’ as he lifted his fingers to touch at his neck. There they were, two tiny and rapidly-healing puncture marks on his neck, lovingly cleaned of any more trickles of red by the doting jiangshi. How long had they been laying there? It must have been too much there at the end, on top of his prior exhaustion, too many feelings and too much everything at once. But it felt all right. More than all right.  
  
“Er…did we?…”  
  
The jiangshi’s fangs were tiny and cute again as she offered him a sheepish little smile. “I didn’t want to hurt you…you’re still all cut up and tired but…” She trailed off for a moment, cool lips pressing to his forehead. “I wanted you to feel good. And I was so hungry for you, was it too much?”  
  
“Nah, nah, it was…” Junkenstein groaned a little as he started to roll to face her, but a strange look came over his face. Mei blinked at him. He looked a little shocked, then disgusted, then thoughtful, then disgusted again, then happy, and then finally…embarrassed. “Er, Mei? Could you do me a favor, darl?”  
  
She nodded quickly. “Anything! A blanket? More soup? Fresh bandages?”  
  
He winced at the cold stickiness beneath his lab coat. “Bottom drawer in the- Well, you already know where they are. Could you er, fetch me a pair of fresh trousers and underthings, please?” He looked away, face burning red.  
  
On cue, her face reddened as well, his own hot blood surging through her in reaction. “Oh!” she exclaimed, hopping upright and hiding a little grin. “Right away, Dr. Junkenstein!”

 

Art by the amazing P-cate, go check them out! <http://pcate.tumblr.com/>


	6. Chapter 6

Dr. Junkenstein was hard at work, soldering in the guts of yet another of his zomnic toys. Far from his usual grumbling and muttering, he whistled to himself as he worked, one of his favorite classical pieces. He’d always been a good whistler, though it tended to be done only when he was happy…and it had been a long time since he’d been this happy. In The Hall of the Mountain King whistled and tootled from his pursed lips, uncaring of the blue sparks flying near his face and goggles.  
  
“Doctor!” Mei’s voice called from behind him.  
  
He whirled around on his stool, dropping his soldering irons and immediately sat straight to attention. “Yes? What is it, love?”  
  
The soft shuffle of her cloth slippers hurried across the room, hop-hop-hop, coming to a stop beside him and waving a wax-sealed envelope. “A raven just dropped this off at the window. A letter!”  
  
“Give!” He snatched the paper from her claws, ripping it open as she crowded in beside him, listening to him muttering under his breath before lowering it to his lap in a baffled manner. “Uh…Well, that’s new? The Lord of the Castle is erm, inviting me to a party?”  
  
“A party?” she echoed, brow furrowing. “But…you said your Lord wasn’t fond of you.”  
  
“He’s not!” Junkenstein spat, turning on her with more vehemence than he meant, both hands gesturing rapidly. “He hates me, he hates everything I do! He’s never appreciated all the work I’ve done for this crumbling empire. I could have turned this fetid hole into the center of a scientific and magical Renaissance, and instead he turned me away, time and time again. Well he may be content to sit there and rot in these ruins…so that’s exactly what he’ll do, when we’re done with him! Him and his Engineer and all the villagers who mocked me, and his whole decayed kingdom! And now that I know the secrets of life, I’ll bring him back. I’ll bring him back just so I can destroy him again! And again! And again! It’ll never end!”  
  
Mei was silent for a long moment, watching his hands shaking and nearly tearing the paper in two. Hesitantly, she reached out to rest a gloved claw upon his shoulder. “Doctor? What about the invitation?”  
  
“Oh, right, the invite…” He focused, adjusting his goggles as he stared down at the paper with disgust. “Much as I’d love to throw this in the privy hole where it belongs, one can’t just ignore a missive from their Lord, eh? Especially don’t need them poking around at a time like this. Not when we’re so close. I’ll show my pretty face for a moment, just long enough to show I’m there, then come right back. Can you get my formals out of the closet, sweetness? Might need some cobwebs cleaned off them too. Tch…Asking me to a party now, of all times. After what they’ve done to me?!”  
  
The jiangshi’s arms encircled him abruptly, pulling him in against the crane sigil on her chest and holding him to the top of her bosom. His enraged trembling halted, burrowing his face against the dark cloth of her robe as she placed cool lips to his always-fevered brow. “Do you want us to keep a watch here while you handle them in the castle?”  
  
He uttered a muffled “Mmmhmm,” against her breasts before pulling his face out with a sigh. “Keep a lockdown until I’m back, sweetness. Anyone besides me tries to get in…well, feel free to eat them.”  
  
“You’re very kind, Doctor,” she said with a fanged smile.  
  
“Heh, aren’t I just the best? At least you see me for what I am, darl. And when all this is done, everyone else will see my greatness too!”  
  
  
***

* * *

  
  
  
Dr. Junkenstein had never liked his formal wear. The coat and ruffles around the throat had been inherited from some dead relative or other and were decades out of style, but he’d never much bothered to update his wardrobe. Mei had done a bang-up job with what they had, though. He was clean, primmed, and pressed, and she’d even managed to slick his hair back…a little. It was starting to spring up in places it shouldn’t, but that was hardly a thing to worry about now, as he limped his way across the courtyards, to the castle proper.  
  
The castle was as dark and dilapidated as the rest of the grounds, but cheerful yellow lights flickered in the window as the doctor invited himself inside. It wasn’t much of a party, even by his standards. He saw a handful of local villagers, a handful of others from the next village over; and there was Lord Balderich himself, standing head and shoulders taller than anyone else in the party, and his ‘royal’ Engineer, who had grown in the other direction and stood head and shoulders shorter than anyone else as well. A single cello, being played rather badly, had been set up in the corner, and Dr. Junkenstein saw nothing of interest save for a table full of food and steins of beer. If he was going to be forced to this wretched gathering with these wretched people, he could at least get some decent grub and a drink out of it.  
  
He loaded up a platter with finger foods, snorting a bit when he took a bite. It didn’t taste anywhere near as good as the meals made for him by his lovely jiangshi. But what else could he expect from these dirty commoners? He shoved a handful of biscuits into his jaws, his cheeks almost overflowing, when he felt a gigantic hand clap around his shoulder. He nearly leapt right out of his coat and ruffles, turning wide-eyed and wide-cheeked to the form of Lord Balderich looming over him, casting him in his enormous shadow, big enough to even give his own Monster a run for his proverbial money. The doctor choked a bit, trying to swallow. “Mmmfmm?!”  
  
“Just the man I was wanting to see,” the giant boomed, smiling with large white teeth. “Our very own Dr. Junkenstein.”  
  
Dr. Junkenstein managed a leery smile and coughed a mouthful of crumbs up out of his throat, voice dry. “Y-you wanted to see me, sir?”  
  
Lord Balderich brushed the debris from the front of his shirt, his Engineer standing nearby and watching in disapproval as his Lord wrapped one bulky arm around the scrawny doctor and started to lead him through the gathering. “We haven’t seen you in a while, Dr. Junkenstein. Where have you been?”  
  
“Oh, uh! You know, doing this and that. Busy, busy.” The badly-played cello was getting fainter and they were getting further away from the party, off into the side rooms, and Junkenstein swallowed a bit nervously. “I mean, after all, Lord Balderich, you didn’t seem to very interested in my last creations…”  
  
Lord Balderich opened up one of the doors, to a room holding little more than a few flickering candles and an enormous keg. Junkenstein found himself abruptly sat down on one of the chairs, and a mug seemingly appeared from nowhere in front of him, sloshing with brew. Lord Balderich and the Engineer sat across from him, each with their own drinks, and his Lord smiled at him again in a rather unnerving way. “Sit with us, doctor, have a drink. Allay our…concerns.”  
  
“Concerns?”  
  
“Have a drink, doctor? A gift from some of the brewers to the north, much better than the ones up at the main event. Have a drink.”  
  
Lord Balderich seemed to be waiting, and at a loss, Junkenstein tilted back his drink. He sputtered a bit, not used to whatever brew was inside, some kind of strong beer that he’d never tasted before. With a cough, he offered a polite, “Uh, thanks. S’good?”  
  
The Engineer smiled. “Damn right. Now, why don’t we all sit down and have a good, hearty man-to-man chat…”  
  
***

* * *

  
  
They had kept refilling his beer and asking him questions. _Where had he been?_ Busy. In the tower. _With what?_ New projects, probably nothing His Lordship would be interested in, as usual. _What had those strange noises been, coming from his lab at night?_ Rats. Probably rats. Big ones. _What of the omnic slaves he’d been working?_ Oh, all those got decommissioned aged ago, just like they’d wanted. _Who was the shadowy figure stealing ducks out of the pond that one night?_ No idea, mate.  
  
The Engineer poured yet more beer into his mug, even as the doctor tried to shake his head, swaying slightly. “And we’ve had reports of  figures, not yours, moving about your tower. More of your little machines playing at people, or do you have…visitors?”  
  
“Visitors?! S-sure I dunno what you mean by that!” Junkenstein sputtered, bubbles popping in the foam of his beer as they watched him drink more.  
  
“I know you have a tendency to talk to yourself, doctor. But I hear that you’ve been talking to…someone else,” The Engineer growled. “What are you up to, in there?”  
  
“Work! S’called work, not like you would know anything about that!”  
  
“Then you wouldn’t mind opening up that tower and showing us your work?” The Engineer stood, as if meaning to head to the tower right that moment.  
  
“Like hell! That’s my personal property, and you’re not gonna disturb us!”  
  
“Technically, Dr. Junkenstein,” Lord Balderich rumbled, “That is my personal property. And if you’re doing unscrupulous things, I have every right-”  
  
Sweat rolled down the doctor’s forehead. “You stay out of it, old man! S-sorry! Sorry, I meant, Your Lordship! But I won’t let you, you leave us alone.”  
  
“Us? Who is ‘us’ and what have you been doing?”  
  
“I’ve been busy, arright?!” He shouted petulantly, stomping his peg against the stone. “I’ve had a lot on my mind! I’ve got more things going on than anyone here could understand. No-body! Nobody except her!”  
  
“…her?” The Engineer said.  
  
“Yeah, I got a _her_ now, and _you_ better stay out of it!”  
  
“Who is ‘her’?” The short bearded man grilled him further.  
  
Junkenstein swayed on his foot and peg, his eyes unfocused behind his goggles. Some part of him knew that telling them about having a ravenous undead Chinese vampire as an assistant was not the best idea, but his being able to brag was an even bigger concern. “I told you I got a ‘her’ now. Ya wanna know why I been busy, mates? Because I got a lovely lady and I needed to put things right with her!”  
  
Both Lord Balderich and his Engineer looked surprised, shooting glances to one another before the shorter man asked doubtfully. “You? With a woman?”  
  
Balderich shushed him with a wave of his hand, smiling slightly and looking on to the mad doctor in slight approval. “Well that is…unexpected news. No wonder your behavior’s been stranger than normal. I had thought that you had more nefarious purposes, not simply problems with women-”  
  
“Well they aren’t exactly problems. And don’t act so surprised! Because I’m a man, with manly concerns, now. Had it with a woman, I did.” The doctor’s scrawny chest puffed, the lace around his neck even seeming to flare like a peacock’s feathers.  
  
“Then congratulations to you, my boy!” Balderich seemed strangely pleased to hear the news, his relief obvious. The doctor gave him a suspicious look, but Balderich merely continued, eyes growing nostalgic. “I suppose I need to apologize for assuming the worst. So you’ve been sneaking about with a woman? Hah! I wouldn’t have guessed it. But I’m sure we all remember our firsts. Or well, perhaps my Engineer is starting to forget after how many children?”  
  
The Engineer smirked and plucked at his beard, “I plan to remember again with her tonight, actually! Ha ha haaa!”  
  
Junkenstein blinked groggily, but smiled along with them. It had been such a long time since either of them had shown the slightest interest in him, and even if they weren’t bowing before him or praising his scientific advancements, he felt a little glow in his chest at even their minute approval. “She’s ace, mates. Dark eyes. Red cheeks. Grabbed right onto those nice plump hips, I did. Right down on the ground like beasts, we did! It was wild!” He took another drink of beer and it made his head spin.  
  
Balderich’s giant palm slammed into his bony back, nearly spilling his drink all over as he laughed heartily. “Now that sounds like the kind of woman we all need!”  
  
The doctor gave them a watery grin. “Couldn’t walk right for the whole night, then had to wash my trousers and everything…Like a man! I mean, that still counts, right?”  
  
“Hmm?”  
  
“Like kind of going all over the inside of your trousers because of all the grindin’ and movin’ and suckin’…” He rested his bony chin in his hands.  
  
The Engineer’s grin slowly faded and he gave a cough, and even Lord Balderich seemed unsure of what to say, giving the young man a look of half pity. “Well that’s…grrhmm…progress? You might not have reached your, er, full destination, but the journey is half the fun, they say! It’s good for a young hot-blooded man like you to live a little, sow your wild oats, do…normal…things. Just be decent to the girl, yes? Who is she? Not someone from the village, I suspect?”  
  
Junkenstein sighed dreamily, downing more beer. “No, she’s from…real far away. Ordered her out of a catalog…”  
  
Lord Balderich slowly put one hand over his face and the Engineer shook his head, muttering something about ‘other shoes always dropping’.  
  
“She’s not like anyone here, no. She’s real pretty but in a different sort of way. Real sweet, too. I don’t care that she can get somewhat strange or if she feels a bit cold or that she smells a little like mothballs! Sometimes you gotta…you gotta overlook little things in the name of love, eh?” His head was starting to hurt and his gut was definitely roiling, and he decided that the best thing to do was drink more beer to quiet it all down again.  
  
“Well, son, that’s a real noble way of looking at love. Good for you. Sometimes you have to overlook the little flaws in each other!”  
  
“Yeah! Yeah, mate!” he slurred into the woodgrain of the table. “Like…if she can overlook all my flaws, although not like there’s many, I can overlook hers.”  
  
“Hear, hear!”  
  
Junkenstein waved his arms, spilling more beer. “I’ll still love her the way she is!”  
  
“That’s the spirit!”  
  
“Yeah! It don’t even really matter to me that she’s dead! I brought her back! I love ‘er!”  
  
The others stopped and stared at the doctor took yet another deep drink, their smiles fading. Even through the haze of alcohol over his senses, Junkenstein could feel the mood in the room change. He looked at them over the rim of his cup, a dribble of amber liquid oozing from the corner of his chapped lips. “Uh?”  
  
And then Balderich launched out of his chair, roughly snatched onto the front of Junkenstein’s coat, ripping the lapels of it and starting go drag him away through the doors with a series of loud bangs. Dr. Junkenstein flailed, gripping at his arm, squirming wildly with cries of ‘ _What gives?!_ ’ and ‘ _What’s the big idea?!_ ’ but the massive man ignored him. His boot and metal peg leg scraped occasionally at the ground, even his massive height held aloft as he was carried towards the entrance of the castle, trailed by the scowling face of the Engineer close behind.  
  
Then there came the creaking of larger doors, and the cool night air on his face, and Junkenstein felt himself spinning end over end until he landed face first into the black mud and sewage of the overflowing ditch outside the castle gate. He peeled himself up out of the sickly mess with a groan, nearly retching, trying to wipe the muck from his goggles. Curious faces started to appear in the yellow windows and around Lord Balderich and the Engineer, peering around them at the crumpled form of the scorned doctor.  
  
“I told you before, Junkenstein! I will not have my subjects graverobbing, consorting with the dead, or you continuing your obsession with…with unnatural things!” Balderich’s huge finger pointed down at him. “I gave you a chance after we caught you digging up the cemetery…twice! But whatever wretched dead woman or whatever poor creatures you are keeping in that tower, I will not allow it.” He looked down to his grinning Engineer. “Get your men and unlock that tower. Break it down if you have to. And you-” He narrowed his eyes at the figure in the mud below him. “Get out.”  
  
Even with his senses reeling and his gut churning, Junkenstein knew that things had gone extremely poorly at this party. He tried to stagger upward, slipping in the stinking sludge as he saw the Engineer vanish back inside. Baring his teeth, he spat out a mouthful of black and faced down the Lord of the Castle. “Don’t you goddamn _dare_ , you overgrown homonculus! You so much as lay one finger on that door, I’ll…I’ll call down the storms on you! You aren’t gonna get her, aren’t gonna get any of them! They’re mine! They’re all _mine_!”  
  
Something pelted him across the face. One of the villagers had purloined a sandwich from the party, hurtling it through the open door and hitting him on the forehead. Roast beef and tomato slid down his already filthy features, and as he went to wipe it away, a much more solid apple hit him square in the gut, almost making him keel over as he found himself beset by a storm of hors d’oeuvres. The villagers always had enjoyed a good show, after all, especially if the lunatic doctor was on the receiving end. And as usual, the Lord of the Castle stood by and watched, disgust written on his features as the man was humiliated further.  
  
Dr. Junkenstein turned and sloppily retaliated, throwing a chunk of bread that missed its target by a mile, staggering back towards the relative safety of his courtyard and his tower. A pastry smacked him in the back of the head for his troubles, the villagers booing and jeering at him as he went. He hobbled as quick as he could, his drunken state making it harder than usual to steer himself towards home. And it made it even easier for the Engineer and his band of followers to catch up to him, even trying to move past him to intercept his path to his own tower. Judging by the tools in their hands, they intended to break their way in sooner than later.  
  
“Don’t you dare! Don’t you fuckin’ dare!” The doctor shrieked, grabbing at the handle of the bolt cutters one of them carried and pulling back, trying to wrench it from his grasp. “You aren’t getting in!”  
  
They shrugged him off and he tried again, until he was roughly thrown back by the bulky arm of the Engineer. “Step aside, boy. You can pack up your things after we’ve made sure the Lord’s holdings are secure.”  
  
Torches were starting to appear amongst the gathering crowd, and Junkenstein knew it was only a matter of time before the pitchforks came out as well. He grasped onto the Engineer’s arm, uselessly trying to throw him back, spattering them both with more stinking mud. “I said no! It’s mine, she’s mine, they’re all mine! I’ll kill you! I’ll kill all of you! Worthless, stinking, wretched cretins! _I’ll kill_ -”  
  
A fist landed upside his nose and he spun like a ballet performer, red droplets flying to speckle over the sludge as he fell back.  
  
A cold breeze swept through the courtyard like a living thing, the flames of the torches flickering and guttering to one side all at the same time. As the crowd’s eyes turned to look, a purple and black blur hurtled across the dark expanse of mud and stone, moving so fast that the wind whistled behind it. It hit the Engineer like a well-aimed thunderbolt, the impact making a loud cracking sound as the stocky man was suddenly sent flying backwards. His back hit the stone wall, limbs splaying outward in almost a silly manner as he groaned loudly, peeling slowly off the vertical surface and landing face-down in the muck as well.  
  
Mei landed noiselessly beside the doctor, leaning down to wrap both arms under him and gently lift him upward. Caring nothing for his filthy state, she teetered him into a standing position before turning to the shocked sea of faces before her, irritably adjusting her glasses and placing her hands on her hips, lips screwing up around her fangs with an expression like a very, very displeased schoolmarm.  
  
“So mean! Honestly!”


	7. Chapter 7

The Adlersbrunn natives could do little but stare in shock, at first. The strange jiangshi didn’t really cut an imposing figure, with her short height and stocky build; but the exotic eastern design of her robes, the odd hopping way in which she moved, and the long glinting whites of her pointy teeth all proved to be more than enough to give the crowd pause. She sternly faced them down, disapproval still written on her features. Her gaze mostly remained on the Engineer, still laying moaning in the mud where she had obliterated him with one hit, lifting one black claw to waggle it back and forth. “I’m sorry about that, but you were being very rude!”  
  
Dr. Junkenstein, his nose still oozing blood, draped his lanky mud-coated body around her, clutching at her covetously and nuzzling his cheek down into her hair. “See?! Just kicked your arse straight out! This is my girl! This is my girl and she’s amazing! Look at her! Just look at her! That’s right, I get to make it with the most lovely lady with the softest-”  
  
“Oooh-kay! Okay! Okay, thank you, doctor.” She waved both hands frantically to shush him as he swayed to one side. “But I’m just here to…check on things.” She gently straightened him up once again, the center of her pupils flashing red as she turned upon Lord Balderich next. “And you must be the Lord of Adlersbrunn?”  
  
The gigantic man was nearly twice her height, frowning as he looked upon her. Still, to his credit, he straightened the stiff cloth around his throat and stepped forward, shielding the crowd behind him. “And you must be Junkenstein’s newest abomination he was speaking of earlier…”  
  
“My name is Mei-Ling Zhou. And _you_ are not being very nice, to me or the doctor!”  
  
“Do not seek to lecture me, creature. I will not tolerate foul or unnatural things within my kingdom. As I told your creator, and now you…Leave. Take that despicable man with you. Or you give me no choice, I will have you both destroyed. This is the only chance I will give you.” The Lord of the castle pointed one thick finger towards the gates far across the main courtyard.  
  
“I am not a creature and he is not a despicable man!” She glowered back at him, the dots on her cheeks expanding as her cheeks puffed angrily. “I know he is an odd man- maybe even a little mad, yes. But he’s a brilliant man. He’s shown me the things he’s made for you. They are amazing! How could you not be proud of that? He can make anything work. How can you see these wondrous things made for you and your kingdom, and think so little of him? I think you’re very lucky to have such a mind working for you, and it’s sad that you’re wasting it with your nonsense. He’s brilliant! And he’s bold, and loyal, and resourceful, and he perseveres through any-”  
  
“ _BbbBllLloooaarrrghhh_!” Behind her, the doctor abruptly bent double, hands on his knees as his stomach hurled up the sickening remains of too much beer and too few snacks.  
  
Mei closed her eyes briefly, cringing a bit. “And…I am going to take him home now.”  
  
“You will take him out of my gates and far away from my land. If you make one more step toward my holdings with that man, creature, I will be forced to act. Last. Warning…” Lord Balderich’s voice lowered to a dangerous, almost thunderous tone.  
  
There was a loud clicking sound from somewhere behind her. The Engineer had recovered and was now bearing a large, clumsy, but very dangerous-looking gun of some kind that she had never seen before. Mei’s eyes darted, flashing in the dim evening light as there was the faint rattle of metal from behind Lord Balderich, the villagers suddenly bristling with weaponry. Why they had so many weapons at a party, she was not entirely sure, but she took a step back to rejoin the doctor’s side. The village folk seemed a little too prepared and eager for her liking, and even her leaping couldn’t outpace a bullet. And Dr. Junkenstein was barely in a state to walk, much less maneuver away from the forming mob. She spread both arms and moved back as if to shield him, baring her teeth as the nubs of her fangs lengthened into near sabers.  
  
Lord Balderich looked neither impressed nor amused. “You’re out of time, creature. You and your creator-”  
  
“I told you, he is not my creator and I’m not his creature!” Mei snarled, before suddenly pointing past the crowd that was forming around them.  
  
“ _They_ are.”  
  
A massive shape, even larger than Lord Balderich himself, rose up from nowhere in the quickly darkening shadows behind the crowd. The Monster reared up to higs full, massive height, grotesque features shaking and thick saliva spattering from his mouth across the screaming crowds as he bellows a guttural roar. One massive arm, as wide as a tree trunk, went sweeping forward, knocking down bodies like bowling pins before him.  
  
At the same time, the Scarecrow’s lanky form hurtled itself from one of the parapets of the castle’s rooftops, bounding across gutters and sending shingles flying before it landed with an inaudible rustle next to Mei and the doctor. Pressing both thumbs to where its ears would have been, it wiggled its spindly fingers in a mocking way at one of the village ladies nearby, who screamed in a very dramatic way and shoved her husband in front of her as a shield.  
  
The Engineer’s gun went off with a boom and Mei lunged in front of the doctor, shoving him out of the way as it hit her instead. The bullet vanished into her as she staggered. Her crane-embroidered robes were ripped apart on the front, burning from the massive chunk of molten burning red metal that was lodged in her soft chest, the threads charring and twisting and her flesh separating as the fiery bullet lodged itself deep into her ribcage instead of his. Her body, smaller than the others, shuddered from the impact and she was sent stumbling back and falling into Junkenstein’s arms, red and black liquid oozing from the gruesome wound.  
  
Junkenstein was still trying to make sense of the things that were happening around him. It was all happening so fast. Too fast, really. His senses were still reeling and everything felt like it was underwater. He hadn’t appreciated Balderich’s orders to exile him and he’d probably said some words about it, then his lovely jiangshi had stepped in to defend him, and now the other monsters were here too, the villagers were attacking them and Mei had gotten shot with something or other and…well, at least part of him was sober enough to be ashamed that one of his immediate thoughts was the regret over Mei’s nice robes and even nicer tits getting ruined in such an uncouth way. But those thoughts were very small indeed, especially after seeing the extent of how she’d been hurt, the wound a blurry mess of red and bone.  
  
“Mei! Mei, no! I got ya! I’ll fix ya, I’ll get ya better-” He clutched at her, slurring words of concern. But to his surprise, she completely shrugged him off a moment later. She stood straight, a deep hole almost directly where her heart was, reaching into her own ribs, and her black talons grabbed the chunk of still-hot metal and cast it aside irritably. He squinted at her unevenly, then smiled. “Oh riiiiight, the undead thing! So cute, I forget sometimes that you’re-”  
  
Then he was spinning end over end again, as Mei picked him up in both arms and shoved him into the grasp of the Scarecrow, holding him like a blushing bride. His wayward creation seemed just as surprised as he was, and the two stared at each other in a very unnerved way as Junkenstein finally started flailing. “Get offa me!”  
  
Mei pointed one bloody claw at the pair. “Get him out of here and activate the defenses in the tower! Go!”  
  
People were screaming, scattering in all directions. Gunshots were going off and Lord Balderich’s and the Monster’s bellowing could both be heard above the din. Apparently the two had clashed in some no-doubt magnificent battle of the titans. But Dr. Junkenstein didn’t even get to see it. Mei had bounded off into the fray, and Junkenstein suddenly found himself clinging onto the Scarecrow’s back for dear life as the lanky creature launched itself onto one of the castle walls and began scaling it like a very large, gangly hay-filled spider. The doctor’s arms were clenched in a death grip around the Scarecrow’s neck, no doubt strangling it (If it breathed or could be strangled, anyway) as it climbed higher and higher.  
  
“Watch where you’re going, you brainless bag of straw! I never should have-AAUUUGH!” A bullet pinged off the wall near their heads, and Junkenstein squeezed both eyes shut and clung that much tighter, the wind starting to whip at his soiled coattails and sobering him up just enough to realize how madly dangerous this all was. Scarecrow continued its climb, arachnid-like limbs finding every crack and uneven surface as it barely made the leap from castle wall to tower wall. Junkenstein focused on the simple task of not vomiting all over both of them and causing them to slip.  
  
And then he was falling, only to land hard on his ass with a rattling crash, when Scarecrow managed to finally squirm inside one of the tower’s high windows. They’d been dumped into one of his lab’s storage closets (Needed to fix that window later, if he had the time) and flailed a bit as he drunkenly tried to extract himself from the pile of scrap wood and buckets he’d been collecting for whatever reason. Scarecrow offered out a gloved hand but Junkenstein ignored it, scrambling past him and throwing open the door, staggering into his labratory proper.  
  
Mei and his Monster were still out there, and he wasn’t really sure even their combined strength could hold off the mob and the Engineer’s contraptions for long. They had only one chance for a retreat, and only Junkenstein could give it to them. Limping over to one of the control panels, he desperately began slamming at various buttons, turning cranks, and then reached under the panel proper, to the hidden red button that would set it all off.  
  
There was a buzz of electricity and the air became alive, as all the zomnics activated at once. The few zomnic specimens still hovering around his lab suddenly stiffened and shuddered, their eyes lighting up and groaning audibly before starting to stream towards the laboratory gates, out towards the courtyard of his lab…and onto the castle grounds where the sounds of fighting could still be heard.  
  
He only hoped they could reach them in time.  
  
***

* * *

  
  
The Monster had taken the brunt of the mob and the Engineer’s weaponry. His skin was coming off in places it usually didn’t, and one of his knees wasn’t moving properly anymore. He limped heavily, guided by the gentle claws of the jiangshi beside him. She had been faster, but hardly invulnerable, and her robes were ripped and torn, along with the flesh beneath. The blood inside her had been old, and dried quickly, but she was clearly drained and tired. The crowds had scattered as the zomnics had become too thick to ignore, and the two had taken their chance to slip away. The robotic creations hovered slowly past them towards the castle, heading in the opposite direction as they finally reached the tower. With a groan, his face clouded by blood from one eye, the Monster pushed open the door.  
  
Inside the lab, they heard the sound of sobbing, and turned the corner to find Dr. Junkenstein hugging onto a very nervous-looking Scarecrow. The drunken doctor uttered a little wail, petting over the straw that poked out of its burlap head, holding the creature against him as it squirmed politely for an escape route. Sniffling wetly, Junkenstein mashed his teary face against its cheek, still intent on holding the emotional embrace. “You’re not the failure! You never were the failure!” he sobbed noisily, “I took it out on you because I thought I was the failure! It’s not your fault!”  
  
The Scarecrow patted him gently in a ‘there there’ sort of way before making another lunge to flee. Junkenstein yanked it back before it could.  
  
“I love you, mate! No, not even my mate… You’re my _son_! You’re my sooooon!”  
  
Mei lifted a hand to her mouth with a little “Oh!” Her brows furrowing as if touched by the dramatics of the scene before her, folding her claws over her heart. “Awwwww!”  
  
The Monster stared for a moment before grunting and looking away, clearly disgusted.  
  
Dr. Junkenstein was momentarily distracted by their arrival, and Scarecrow took its chance, finally squiggling its way out its lunatic creator’s embrace and making a swift get-away up one of the nearby pillars. Junkenstein staggered upright, arms out as he made his way over towards Mei and the Monster, adjusting his goggles as he examined them both. “Blimey, you two could do with a bit of a touch-up. Where’s the-HCCK” He hiccuped noisily. “Th’ needle n’ thread, I’ll get right to work on ya-”  
  
Mei shook her head quickly, going to position herself under the doctor’s arm and helping hold him upright. “Oh! Oh no, doctor, I think we’ll be all right for now. At least until you’re a bit more…um, clear-headed? I think we all just need to go take a nice sit down while we make sure the tower’s secure.” She paused to give a worried look towards the battered Monster, whispering a quick “Will you be all right?” and receiving a thumbs up in return. Tugging at the doctor’s hand, she started to lead him towards the stairs. “Why don’t we just-”  
  
There was a noise and a sudden brilliant light from one of Junkenstein’s lab tables. An orb shape, covered with a stained tablecloth, was pulsing on and off, glowing yellow.  
  
“That’ll be her, then,” the doctor said unhappily, wrinkling his pointed nose. “Here, lemme talk to her! I got a lot t’say!”  
  
“Who?”  
  
“The Witch of the Wilds, that is. She gave me some sort of ball thing so we can talk to each other. Threw a thing on it because I swear it’s watchin’ me.”  
  
“Why don’t you let me say hello to her first? It would be so nice to talk to her again.” Mei kept a hand on his chest, keeping him at bay as he went for the orb. The doctor was still stumbling drunk from whatever they’d been giving him and none of them were in particularly good shape, but she still pasted a smile on her face as she pulled the sheet from the shimmering yellow orb and curiously tapped it a few times.  
  
She startled a bit as a shape coalesced inside the glass, solidifying into the Witch’s visage, who looked a little surprised. “Mei-Ling? Is that you? Ah, it’s so good to see you again! Lovely to see that the doctor’s plans worked and have you back with us. Though I do wonder…Are all the doctor’s plans currently on track? I’m rather wondering why the defense systems have been activated, why there are zomnics swarming your position, and why the castle is currently locked down and the people are arming themselves?…”  
  
Mei rubbed the back of her head a bit. “It’s really nice to be back. I’m really looking forward to your visit, too! It’s just, there have been some…complications?”  
  
“Dear, you have a bit of-” The Witch gestured to her chin and teeth, and Mei realized that both of them were stained red.  
  
She scrubbed at it with her sleeve quickly. “Sorry! Sorry, sorry, I’m sorry. We had a bit of trouble earlier. The doctor was summoned to a party, and he says that the Lord of the castle was giving him drinks and asking him questions and he may have said some things-”  
  
Junkenstein’s voice sounded from somewhere behind her, whining, “Don’t tell her that, it’ll make me look bad! What she don’t know won’t hurt ‘er!”  
  
The Witch put a hand over her face.  
  
“I don’t know what they gave him, but he’s a little out of his mind now, so I’m taking messages for him!” the jiangshi smiled nervously, flecks of blood still caught between her teeth. “And don’t worry! The defenses are keeping everyone here safe. That Engineer was a lot tougher than I thought he was, and there were so many people so, we grabbed the doctor and managed to get home. Um. What…should I do?”  
  
“Well, I suppose this is just as well. My associates have been getting a little bored lately, and with this happening so suddenly, Balderich won’t be able to summon his allies so quickly. We may actually be able to make this work out. For now, you should-”  
  
Junkenstein suddenly popped into view, falling onto Mei from above and resting his head on her hat. “Hiiii!”  
  
“Yes, hello Dr. Junkenstein, it’s nice to see you-” The Witch continued smoothly, as Mei hurriedly pushed him back out of view. “For now, you should bolster the defenses whilst I get everything else in place. No use scolding anyone while they’re not in the state for it, hm? For now, stay inside and take care of things as best you can in that madhouse. You look like you’ve had a bit of a rough night, yourself. And please sober the doctor up before I get there, he tends to ramble.”  
  
Mei adjusted her glasses and glanced back at Junkenstein, who was now laying spread-eagled on the dirty floor and rambling already. “Honestly! Honestly, Mei, sweetie pie, you should try this. No lie, laying on the ground like this is the best time I’ve had on a long while. Mei, c’mere, try this! Meeeiiii!”  
  
The Witch half-lidded her eyes. “This is why I keep a no-drinking policy on my servants, I swear.”  
  
Mei gave an apologetic little shrug of her shoulders. “I’ll make sure everything gets in order. Including him. I’ll make sure there’s tea and snacks for everyone too. Oh, please ask the Reaper if the pumpkin cookies offended him, were those okay? And I’ll get some of that coffee he likes. I hope everyone has a safe trip! _Zài jiàn_ , bye bye!”  
  
“Mei-Ling, you are entirely the best and I wish you were mine. I wish you luck, it does sound like you’ll need it. Ta-ta!” And with that, the orb’s light flickered as the image faded away.  
  
With a sigh and a little wince, Mei grumbled and rubbed at her wounded chest before turning back to Junkenstein still sprawling on the floor. With a little huff, she leaned down and scooped him up, throwing him over her shoulder. It didn’t really work out as planned, his immense lanky height simply leaving him with his foot and peg still dragging on the ground as she started to waddle off with him.

“Oi! What’s the idear?!” he groaned.  
  
“You’re covered in mud, blood, and less than pleasant things, doctor. You’re taking a bath while I check on a few things for you, yes?”  
  
“All right, point there. I’m rotten, both booze wise and smelly-wise. How about after I’m clean, we uh…You’re looking a bit rough, darl. Not in a bad way! But how about we um, you could give me a kiss? Make you feel better? Least I can give, eh? Gold star for you, love, world’s best assistant.” He smiled blearily at her as she paused. “Won’t go off in my pants this time, promise. Ugh, look at those little dots on your cheeks, on your face, I love your faaaace.”  
  
She hesitated, batting his hands away from her cheeks before continuing on. “Well, I could use…a little… Well, why don’t we talk about that after we’re both cleaned up and you don’t smell like a sewage pipe anymore?”  
  
That seemed to content him for now, draping himself limply back over her squat little shoulder as his feet dragged and bumped up every step. “Yeah! Yeah, kisses from my Mei! I’m gonna get so good and clean for you, my little bean bun. I’m gonna use the flowery-type soap and everything.”  
  
“Wh-You’re supposed to use that _every_ time!” With an exasperated sigh, she continued to drag him off towards the baths.

 

 

Art by the amazing P-Cate! Check them out! <http://pcate.tumblr.com/>


	8. Chapter 8

He lay slumped in the aged porcelain claw-foot tub, single dripping foot hanging out of it and his head draped on the edge, a hot cloth draped over his face. He wasn’t entirely sure how long he’d been in the water, but the prune-like wrinkled texture of his fingertips hinted that it had been a while. He’d already gone through two tubs full of murky water already, as he’d been so filthy and mud-caked that it had almost stoppered the drain. The scrubbing had helped, though. He’d hated every second of it, lathering himself up with that perfumey soap and scrubbing the harsh brush across his raw flesh until it was pink and tingly, but he’d needed it and it would be worth it.  
  
The drunken haze in his brain had faded to a pleasant buzz, though the corners in his brain still felt foggy and sluggish. Whatever they had been feeding him, it had been potent enough to knock him on his ass- in a literal sense, even- at least a few times. But the alarms around his tower remained untriggered and the zomnic watchbots were doing their jobs just like they’d been designed to do. It seemed like the good people of Adlersbrunn didn’t storm castles like they used to, not with the hordes of bots, monstrous creations, and vampiric undead assistants roaming about.  
  
He’d had his fill of the bath, hauling himself up onto the edge and reaching for the fluffy towel nearby. He’d never had fluffy towels before, usually content with the crunchy rags he’d had laying about. But now he had fluffy towels, clean mirrors, and even those little handcrafted soaps that were shaped like little cakes but did not taste like cakes (a mistake which, to his credit, he had only made twice), and even a robe. Had he always had that robe? He couldn’t remember. He couldn’t remember a lot of things, really, like being without these creature comforts that his assistant quietly made for him. He still had no idea how she did any of it, but at the end of the day, it didn’t really matter so long as he had them…and her.  
  
Twisting his prosthetic limbs back into place, he toweled off and wrapped the robe around his scrawny shoulders, tying it loosely shut as he opened the door back out to his quarters. Mei was sitting on the old chest by the bed, wearing one of his lab coats as she mournfully ran a needle and thread through the robes she’d arrived with. The shot to her chest had ruined the sigil of the crane and she struggled to repair it, her posture slumped and tired. Even the feather on her hat was more limp and lifeless than usual, and Dr. Junkenstein awkwardly ran a hand through his damp shocked-white hair as he spoke up.  
  
“I’ll order you a new one. When this is over, I’ll get you a whole carriage trunk full of them from your homeland. You, er, you look real nice in blue, so we can get lots of blue ones?”  
  
She looked up at him, adjusting her glasses. “Oh! I’m sorry, doctor, I didn’t hear you were finished in the bath. I’ve checked the perimeters and everything’s all right for now. The others are getting patched up and Scarecrow’s keeping an eye on the castle. We should all be okay until the Witch arrives. I think I can repair my old robes, I just need some more thread and…” She wavered a little, placing a hand to her hurt ribs. “I’m just feeling a little tired, I’m sorry.”  
  
“Defenses are holding, lovey. We’ll get through this yet. And as for you, well, we can’t have my favorite assistant feeling under the weather...” He pulled the collar of his robe aside, baring his pale throat. “I’m feeling better, lemme help you feel better.”  
  
“I shouldn’t. You’re probably still a little, well…Dr. Drunkenstein?” She managed a little fanged smile, though clearly exhausted.  
  
“Maybe a little! But I’m feeling pretty good…” he admitted, shrilling a giggle under his breath as he slid his long arms around her smaller form. The potent booze still in his system was still taking the edge off , and the dots on her cheeks helped his aim as he promptly went to annoy her, starting to plaster kisses around her face as she started squirming. “I’m feelin’ pretty good, would feel even better if you join me. Hey, direct order from your boss, eh? Take a little break from assisting me so you can…uh…” He trailed off a little, grinning stupidly. “Well, I mean, maybe you can still assist me, but…you know?”  
  
Her lips bulged slightly as he saw her tongue move across her upper teeth, staring at the pillar of his neck so close by. “Are you sure that would be okay?”  
  
“More than okay, I swear it. Come on, my dove,” he assured her quickly, gently threading his long fingers through her hair and urging her against him. “That’s the way…”  
  
She said something or other, perhaps a fading protest, he wasn’t sure. But then he felt the brush of her tongue against his throat, gliding along the pulsing vein and finally settling on a spot. She wet the area with a few laps before he felt the prickle of the tips of her fangs, and his scorched lashes drifted shut as he took a breath…and then he felt the familiar tinge of pain as they pierced through, followed by the same wave of euphoria as before. Every muscle relaxed in her grip, eyes rolling back in his sockets as he panted sluggishly into her hair.  
  
If the booze made him feel good, then this was better than that entire keg of whatever they’d been giving him.  
  
The jiangshi’s face remained buried against his neck, sucking from the open vein, and it was good enough that he felt like he was dying…  
  
Which technically, he was, he supposed. Being drained of blood and essence tended to do that to a person. Which, he also supposed, was why it only lasted for a few brief and blissful moments before she drew away from him. Red stained her chin as she leaned to lathe her tongue against the wound and clot the flow, and he groaned audibly as the pleasure faded and his senses returned. She wiped at her face with the back of her hand.  
  
“Oh…that _is_ better,” she said.  
  
He lifted his hand up to run it through coarse gray hair. “You sure that’s enough? Cause, I don’t mind-”  
  
“It’s enough for now. I don’t want you falling asleep on me yet…” she said, a slight purr underneath her voice that made him shudder.  
  
And he did have to admit that even that brief ‘sip’ had made her look better. Her skin was no longer as pale, more of a peach than a gray, and now she emitted body heat instead of nothing at all. Indeed, she was warming up under his very fingertips. And she was especially warm in the lips, which she pressed to his. Curiosity stirred as it often did, and the doctor tilted his head between their kisses.  
  
“You feel good…I mean, you feel warmer now. Does the blood help? Does it do something?”  
  
“Your blood is so hot I barely have to do anything with it. It warms me right up, and you always taste so good…sometimes it’s hard to stop,” she murmured, pressing kisses along his neck and shoulder, his bathrobe slipping open and starting to fall down to one side of his arms.  
  
“Don’t stop this time,” he said quickly. “I’ll be fine. I want to. I really, really want to.”  
  
“I want to as well...”  
  
She withdrew from him, untying the strings of her pants and letting them drop into a puddle of fabric of dark navy…and a flash of powder blue cloth that turned out to be her undergarments, a moment later. And though she unsnapped the first buttons at the top of her borrowed labcoat, she left the rest shut as she went to push him down the rest of the way on the bed. Climbing atop him a moment later, her bare legs straddled his thighs and he felt his hips push forward of their own accord, pulling her down onto him as he kissed her again. He barely noticed when she grasped his hand, bringing it up to lay more kisses to his scarred knuckles.  
  
Her long tongue wrapped around his fingers, almost serpentine as it wiggled around them, leaving them slicked and wet as he stared in awe. Oh god what would _that_ feel like if it wrapped around his- But then she was withdrawing that wondrous tongue, and taking his wrist to guide him gently forward and down, to the cleft between her legs. Junkenstein’s ears went red and he licked his lips in a nervous sort of hunger, his digits shaking as she turned them palm up and let his fingertips tease between her thighs. She was so soft everywhere, but somehow managed to be even softer here as he stroked along the length of her slit. It was warm and wet, with more warmth radiating from her core, and he could feel those soft lips parting under his fingers and- _HOW? How could she be even softer on the inside?_ …He’d definitely have to study this one. Study her thoroughly.  
  
“Slow at first,” she whispered, her grip still around his wrist as he nodded quickly. Without too much hesitation, he pushed a finger inside her and found no resistance in that snug heat, slipping in up to his middle joint with ease. She sighed a little in approval, and helped show him what to do, still guiding his hand with little touches as he thrust his finger a few times, sliding in until it was up to his knuckle. It was just as easy to add a second finger, spreading them apart a little, pumping his wrist steadily as she writhed atop him. Her other arm slung itself around his narrow shoulders to drag him into another kiss, and he swallowed her moans as she whispered against his lips, “Ah, ah…it’s been so long, I forgot it feels so good…”  
  
“I’ll help ya remember. Show ya how good I can be,” he murmured huskily. He withdrew his fingers from her, looking to where they glinted wetly in the light, still warm and sticky to the touch. Suddenly aching for a taste, he brought them up to his mouth, curiously licking at their tips. It wasn’t really like anything he’d tasted before; something musky and juicy and a tiny bit bitter, or was it sweet? And maybe a hint of peaches? The little sample on his fingertips was hardly going to be enough, if he wanted to be sure. Looking up at her, he gripped into the meat of both thighs and urged her up towards his face. “This next. Can we try it? Wanna try more of you, sweetness.”  
  
She looked a little surprised, brushing her bangs out of her eyes with the back of one hand. “Oh! I didn’t think you’d want to- I mean, I thought you’d want me to do that to you-” She glanced back to where the bulge below his bathrobe was threatening to break out at any moment, and was baffled that he was seemingly able to ignore it. Perhaps it was sheer inexperience, or he’d become distracted by this new aspect of her. But by the way he was pulling at her, nudging her up until she was up on her knees and straddling his shoulders, he didn’t want to be denied. So she did not deny him.  
  
Looking up at her adoringly, he waited until she seemed comfortable, settling herself over him. Running his fingers back along her slit a few more times, he licked his lips hungrily and gripped onto the cushioned flesh of her rear, pulling her down onto his waiting mouth. The bottom of her open robes draped over the top of his head like a curtain as he dove between her thighs so suddenly that she almost jumped. And then the wet probing of his tongue began to explore her with such eagerness that it left her breathless, even for one who no longer drew breath.    
  
It would be a lie to say it wasn’t a little awkward at first. He was too excited, too sloppy, and he even bumped her with that pointed nose of his a few times. His first few licks were too quick, too sharp, but as he quickly settled between her thighs, there was certainly something to be said for his…enthusiasm. He ate at her hungrily at first, but with a few soothing pets over his head, he slowed himself to a more thoughtful pace. His thrusting tongue flattened as he began to lick broad strokes across her, swirling to taste inside her, and when she gasped a little as he sucked on her clit, he took special care there more than anywhere else.  
  
Without even thinking, she began to roll her hips along with his movements, guiding him to where she needed him most. She hadn’t felt such pleasures after sleeping away a few hundred years or so, and Dr. Junkenstein was more than happy to help her remember. He stroked at her entrance with his fingers teasingly, wetting them before pushing back inside, setting his sights on the sensitive bud of her clit and focusing there as his slick digits started to thrust in and out of her.  
  
“Ah! Ah, ah, ah…” Little pants of breath dripped past her reddened lips, and his ears perked a little to hone in and follow the sound. Her claws reached down blindly, finding a handful of his hair and curling for hold. His lips and tongue kept working, uttering lewd wet noises as he continued, until the jiangshi was all but writhing atop him as she rode his face.  
  
With one last white-knuckled grip of his hair, maybe a little harder than she’d meant, she came around his fingers and tongue. For a moment, the grimace she wore made him worry, but the softening of her expression and the noises she made were quickly recognized as pleasure. Pride consumed him at the thought, the idea of someone as composed and graceful as his jiangshi coming undone just for him, and he went about lathing his tongue along her to lick her clean as he withdrew his shining digits. Wiping the wetness away from his chin with the back of his hand, he carefully went to maneuver out from under her, sending her sliding down his chest to land in his lap. His cock reared uncontrollably at the sensation of her so close by, pulsing with every rapid beat of his heart, but he managed a very shaky grin.  
  
“I did good?” he asked, looking at her hopefully though he already knew the answer.  
  
“You did good. So very good.” She had to take a moment to compose herself, seeming almost a little sheepish. “I’d forgotten how good it was.”  
  
“Then we’ll do it a lot more. I’m a real quick study, bet I can make it even better for you. We’ll need to practice, though. A lot. Lots of practice, darl.”  
  
“Of course, Dr. Junkenstein. But then, there’s other things we can learn too…”  
  
She shifted atop his lap, and her rump brushed against the stiffness beneath his bathrobe. The good doctor shuddered almost comically at the near-contact, and then scrambled to finally disrobe, almost flailing with her atop him to rip away the fluffy cloth, squirming it out from under him to wad it into a ball and toss it onto the floor. Her borrowed labcoat was his next target, hands shaking as he struggled to undo the buttons and snaps. He had to remind himself to be careful, couldn’t just tear them off her the way he wanted. He tried to be delicate even when she lifted her arms and he helped shuck it up and off her, revealing more acreage of pale white flesh, barely held in by the binding cloth around her chest…and with a single tug, even that was pulled away.  
  
Her breasts bounced free in front of him, and he promptly attacked them with the same zeal as before. Laying bruising kisses across the tops of them, he latched quickly onto one of the soft pink nipples, suckling at her with lewd wet noises that made her squeak a little. He sucked hard until it abruptly popped free, a string of saliva trailing from his lip, and then went to repeat it on the opposite breast. All the while his hands were groping and massaging steadily, sinking up to his knuckles in the seemingly endless plush flesh of her chest. Only the throb of his neglected cock reminded him of his own growing impatience, especially when she sank down him again and he felt the weight of her rump settle down so dangerously close to being on top of him…  
  
How should he have her? As far as he knew, tradition bade that he put her on her back and simply go at her. Traditional, yes, but that might be romantic, being able to see her face and have her wrap her arms around him and tell him how good he was. Or was that actually _too_ traditional? There was something awfully tempting about doing it as the animals did it, but he wasn’t allowed to do that, was he? The thought of her on her hands and knees below him interested him more than it should have. But no, certainly not for their first time. His first time. Or could he? Or, he could simply grab her and lower her down on his hips. She was so close he could literally feel her, and just one little yank and he’d be in her and…No, wouldn’t that be too much? Would that be enough? What about the angles? God, he hadn’t even thought about the angles he’d need to record for later. He’d need a strategy for this, maybe someone to take notes? No, focus, you idiot, of course she couldn’t take notes, not when she-  
  
“…Dr. Junkenstein? Doctor?” Mei’s finger prodded gently into his shoulder and he realized he’d been simply been sitting there frozen for nearly a minute, staring into her breasts like a rat in the headlights, with his thoughts still buzzing and stampeding all over his brains. Tilting her head, she leaned forward. “Are you okay?”  
   
“Yeah! Yeah, sugar bean, just kinda…got thinking again. I got this, though! We should…Hold on a tick…” He reached out to try and position her, then realized he still hadn’t decided on a position, and started panicking all over again. “Uh, we should…”  
  
She smiled a bit, then placed a claw gently to his bare chest. “Oooh... Maybe I could show you how I like things, just to begin? I have your permission, don’t I? Doctor?”  
  
He smiled widely, more than a bit relieved. Maybe she could just show him a thing or two to get started before he took over. “Permission? Of course, love. I didn’t m-”  
  
And then both her claws were all but slamming against his bony chest, pushing him roughly into the mattress. He looked a bit stunned, finding the back of his head very abruptly hitting a pile of pillows, and he almost started to protest. But she grasped him by the shoulders and held him in place as she positioned herself over him. She didn’t even need to look back, her eyes alight and staring right into his as she grinned, pushing her calves together on either side of his narrow hips, the tops of her feet curled over his thighs to keep him still. He was almost of a mind to ask her where in the hell she’d learned to do such a thing, but then she aimed her hips towards the head of his waiting cock; and in one swift motion, rocked backward and down to take him inside her.  
  
So this was coitus. Well, no bloody wonder the common folk were so obsessed with the act, if this is what it felt like. A noise of awed pleasure tore from his lips as she all but impaled herself upon his length, tight and wet and hot all around him. Forget masturbation forever after that, no fist of his could ever possibly compare, even the metal one. The pressure squeezed all around him, little muscular movements fluttering autonomously as she took him deep, until he’d bottomed out and her hips were flush against his. He managed to gasp a little breath and tried to stammer something about how wonderful it felt, but she had no mind of letting him. She barely gave him a few moments to enjoy the sensation before she started moving, pulling herself up and almost off him before sliding down once more. Her soft rear slammed down onto his hips again, and then she did it again, and again…  
  
The friction was already almost too much to bear, and they had barely started. The good doctor groaned helplessly beneath her, as his lovely assistant set the pace and began riding him in earnest. He lay back, seemingly overwhelmed as his fingers clawed into the rumpled sheets, hips starting to buck a little to chase more friction, more pressure; to bury himself back inside her every time she started to leave him. He tried to reach for her, but the heavy weight of her claws against his shoulders kept him pinned to the pillows.  
  
“Does it feel good?” she asked, her voice a little unsteady from her movements. “Do you like that?”  
  
He made a noise and nodded, expression contorting when she began to speed up. The jolting motion traveled up her entire body with every thrust of her hips, and he lay transfixed by the sight of her ample white breasts bouncing up and down in rhythm with the rest of her, juddering to and fro in an almost taunting manner just in front of his nose.  
  
“Ah! I’ve been - wanting you to say yes,” she moaned. “I’ve been wanting your permission, your blood, your cock, all of you! Doctor!”  
  
His face reddened and his eyes widened at her words, shocked. “M-Mei!”  
  
“My shy boy,” She smiled down at him, fangs glistening as she shunted her hips forward upon him and caused him to moan again. “Doing so well, Doctor. You’re so good.”  
  
There it was again, that feeling he only got when he was being praised. It came so rarely, no matter how hard he tried. So many people, his Lord and the Witch included, offered far more mockery and derision than the appreciation he so rightfully deserved. Only his jiangshi understood him that way; with all her little encouragements and compliments, the way she looked at him with such adoration, the way she appraised him in that breathless way for being so, so good…  
  
He struggled against her grip on him, and she laughed a bit as she continued to ride him into the mattress, still pinning his scrawny form down with her sheer strength. Her hips moved steadily, the wet smack of flesh echoing around his chambers for the first time. He liked the way it sounded. Junkenstein slavered at the sight of her above him, wanting to touch her, kiss her, or taste any part of her. But she giggled and kept out of reach, grinding her hips down harder upon him and gyrating in a slow circle just to tease him all the more.  
  
“Mm! You have to tell me, Doctor. Just tell me what you want. I’ll assist you…”  
  
He licked at his dry lips, nodding dumbly. He was the Doctor after all, and his lovely assistant needed to be told what to do. Of course. Even if it made his ears burn and was hardly proper for a gentleman of his caliber. He swallowed thickly and looked up at her, finding his voice after a moment. “I, er…T-take your hands off me,” he said, and blinked as she complied immediately. He stared at her bouncing form, unable to keep his eyes off her heaving chest. Well, he was the one in charge here, wasn’t he? “Put them on your bosom. Roll ‘em about for me, lovely.”  
  
To his delight, that was precisely what she did, fingers digging into the white flesh of her breasts as she began to massage them in front of his face, fondling and tugging at the little nubs crowning each one before rolling them in her palm and moaning aloud a little. He stared with rapt attention, drool gathering in his half-open mouth, before burying his face back into them. Barely having time to rasp aloud a “That’s my girl. Keep bouncin’ for me,” before he began kissing and sucking on them once more, his lanky spine bent to reach them as she continued grinding away atop his lap. With his face buried in her sweet chest, he could barely hear her little whispers, and it was with great reluctance that he pulled back to order her to “Stop. Stop a moment.”  
  
She stopped, sitting down hard on his cock and staying there. But it gave him an opening and he took it. He surged forward, nearly bowling her over as he went to roll onto his knees. “Lay back, lovely.”  
  
“Right away, doctor,” she answered sweetly, and let herself fall back into the covers as the much taller form of the doctor loomed up above her, staring down at her like a starved thing kept from its meal as he hurried to position her legs on either side of him.  
  
It only took him a few moments to find the entrance to that sweet hole, but even that felt too long as he plunged back inside her. She’d shown him what to do, and he was a very, very quick learner. Her arms wrapped around him quickly as he began thrusting in earnest, accompanied by grunts of pleasure and shrill sweet nothings. He choked out her name, panting his hot breath against her skin, barely heard over the sounds of their bodies, until he finally slurred desperately into her ear, “Tell me it’s good. Tell me…it’s good for you?”  
  
Her expression softened for a moment, sliding her clutching arms up towards either side of his jaw as she looked him in the eye. “It is good. You are good to me. And I’ll make it good for you too, Doctor…”  
  
And she did, pushing her hips up into his to take him deep as she seized his lips in a wild kiss. He almost sobbed into her mouth, he did, kissing her back as his thrusts only increased in ferocity. He’d never been the most athletic of blokes, and rivulets of sweat were running off his pale, skinny body and dripping onto her- but she didn’t seem to mind at all, pulling him even closer against her. Everything was starting to become a little much, and something was building in him…Not just the rapidly tightening feeling in his balls, mind you, that was obvious. But the utter adoration he felt for his little jiangshi, and that she shared it tenfold and adored him back…  
  
The doctor kissed her hard, biting at her lips and earning another squeaking moan. It was going to be good, for both of them. He had to make sure of it.  
  
Just as his crescendo was almost done building, when she felt the veins straining in his neck and the grimace of completion start to contort his features, she tore her lips away from his. He uttered a strangled sound of dismay, starting to open his eyes- only to have her lunge instead for his throat. Her fangs sunk into the already bruised flesh, re-opening the wound from earlier as they buried in deep, biting down. The doctor’s eyes flew open, and then rolled backward until only the whites were showing.  
  
It had been euphoria before, on the verge of finally cumming inside her. But as the sensation of the bite swept across him, it all coalesced into something so much more. There wasn’t even a word for it; not euphoria, or ecstasy, or even bliss. Frankly, he wasn’t even sure he was conscious anymore, only dimly aware of any sense of self at all as his vision turned grayer and grayer until it went black. Their moans combined into one long, low sound that might have been the rush of blood between his ears. Maybe it had been so good that he had literally died? Hopefully the Witch wouldn’t bring him back from this one. If this was death, he wanted to stay here forever with her, until…

  
  
***

* * *

  
  
He woke back up with a little snort, choking on his own saliva. “Ghhuh!”  
  
The canopy above him and the familiar rumpled sheets meant he was back in his own bed, and when his hand flew up to his neck and he felt a little aching patch of skin, he knew he was back in his own body as well. Sitting up with a few thrashing movements, he found that he was still naked and his limbs felt like heated rubber, taking a moment to gain control of them with a few stretches before he looked around in a bewildered state.  
  
“Mei? Mei, pudding pie? You here?”  
  
“I’m here!” came her voice, and he relaxed a little as she came hopping in from the direction of his study. She was fully dressed and practically glowed, her body flushed and pink and still warm. Even the painted dots on her cheeks seemed brighter somehow as she hurried in to drop a lump of cloth by the foot of the bed. “I’m sorry, Dr. Junkenstein, I was just about to wake you up. I brought you fresh clothes and a coat, and all your notes are here, Scarecrow is still avoiding you, the defenses are holding, and-”  
  
“Yeah, yeah, sure,” he said, waving a hand quickly. “Uh…We did…I mean, did we? That time?”  
  
She smiled coyly and averted her gaze, bringing a claw up to curl in a very chaste manner by her fangs. “…Did you like it? Did I take too much?”  
  
A stupid grin grew across his face. He pushed away the remainder of the sheets, throwing his leg and peg out over the bed- wobbling at first before heading over to her. “Said I was a quick study, didn’t I?…Yeah. Yeah, liked that pretty well, I did. But that’s the thing with science, my dove, we need to keep repeating to make sure of the results…” His lanky arms wrapped around her, starting to pull her back towards the bed. “Still lots of experiments to do. Still want t-”  
  
“Dr. Junkenstein!” She bit back a grin, but held her ground as she shooed him away, pointing to the lump of clothes nearby. “We still have your schedule to think of. The Witch and the others are already due to arrive any minute now-”  
  
“Bloody hell!” He swore and turned to start struggling into his undergarments, as Mei began unfurling out his coat and harness for him. “Uh! Put it on the schedule for after we’ve conquered Adlersbrunn, maybe, after I take you out for that nice dinner.”  
  
“Right away, Doctor.”  
  
Some minutes later, the Witch and her servants made their way through the familiar halls of the laboratory, their clothing dry despite the hush of rain and thunder outside. They were soon hailed by the voice of the doctor himself, who lifted a hand and waved to them as he approached, followed by the placidly hopping jiangshi with her arms full of papers and plans.  
  
The Reaper paused, eying them carefully. The doctor was no longer so hunched over as he normally was, and there was an odd spring to his step; a little more confidence in the swing of his limbs and a wider stance, almost a strut…and that sweet vampiric assistant of his looked brighter and freshly fed, and the both of them kept glancing at each other and smiling…  
  
“Did th-” he started, gravelly tones both bewildered and disgusted.  
  
“Don’t,” the Witch said firmly, muttering tersely to him even as she smiled and waved back at the two. “Do not even broach that subject, not when we’ve work to do. Let. It. Go.”  
  
“…Yes, My Lady.”  
  
Dr. Junkenstein and Mei waved the others on towards the kitchen and their makeshift meeting room, waiting until the others had gone in before the doctor looked down at her a bit nervously. “Been waiting for this for so long, my lovely. Still doesn’t feel quite real yet, eh? Suppose as soon as the real bloodshed starts, it-”  
  
The Scarecrow slunk around the corner and stopped short as it found the Doctor blocking the door. For a moment the two stared at one another, Dr. Junkenstein narrowing his gaze slowly as the Scarecrow’s lenses whirred and clicked with every little focus. Very slowly it lifted both gloved hands in a placating manner, taking a step back as if to avoid any more booze-fueled embraces or lovelorn wailing. Mei glanced between the two with a little gasp, covering her mouth.  
  
“The hell’s that! Late again! This is an important meeting and you almost missed it, you oat-brained cretin! Get in there before you make an even greater arse of yourself than usual!” Dr. Junkenstein pointed angrily at his wayward creation, spitting his words.  
  
The Scarecrow looked visibly relieved, slumping forward and grasping its chest before offering a sloppy salute and shambling towards the kitchens, dodging an attempted kick from Dr. Junkenstein’s metal peg leg.  
  
“Well, it seems things are back to normal for now. Don’t worry, Dr. Junkenstein. No matter what happens, I’ll be with you.” Mei smiled up at him with a little giggle, the metallic ends of her claws clicking as they wrapped around his robotic hand, entwining their digits together. “Wǒ dāyìng nǐ. I promise.”  
  
He gave her a little squeeze, then released her to smooth the front of his labcoat. Mei dutifully stood straight, hefting her papers to follow him in to their last gathering before the great battle. The two nodded at one another, and Junkenstein’s maniacal grin slowly spread over his face once more.  
  
“Then let’s go, my lovely. Whatever happens…Let’s make this a night they’ll never forget!”  
  
***

* * *

 

  
  
“A soldier, an alchemist, an archer and an oddity. A motley group we have assembled here.”  
  
The gunslinger shot the soldier a rather baleful look, causing both the alchemist and the archer to chuckle to themselves. The four heroes were the only ones that had arrived thus far, though ravens flew fast around the land, bearing the messages of a desperate Lord and the maniacal forces that had instilled themselves in the crumbling remains of his castle. The rain did not deter them, though it caused the archer to sniffle unhappily and repeatedly primp at his water-slicked hair.  
  
The alchemist slung her rifle over her back, looking up at the tower and the lights inside. The moaning of the zomnics was audible even from here, as they milled around the castle’s courtyard, their numbers growing by the hour. “They say the doctor wasn’t always mad, you know. What could have driven a man to take up with such monsters, I wonder?”  
  
The soldier stepped up beside her. “Monsters and ghosts…”  
  
“You think he is here?”  
  
“He’s here, all right. The Reaper may have found a new master, but nothing will heal his wicked ways. Not even your alchemy, old friend.”  
  
“…What of the rest?”  
  
The soldier shouldered his gun, climbing the mold-dampened stone staircase of one of the ramparts. “Witches, ghosts, dragons, monstrosities, scarecrows…and the villagers say there’s a vampire now too. This Dr. Junkenstein seems to have assembled an even more motley team than our own. Especially our team, with the oddity…”  
  
“I’m right here!” the gunslinger protested.  
  
The others laughed once more before heading out into the pouring rain, towards whatever fates awaited them.

 

  
  
_Our tale begins in Adlersbrunn, where the lord of the castle has called for heroes to come to his aid, and defend him against the mad Dr. Junkenstein…_


End file.
